A Sophisticated Mommy: Mommy's turn to race!

Last weekend, Aleena participated in a race so this week is my turn. I am fairly confident that I will get past the starting line unlike my little girl although I won't be nearly as cute as she was and neither will my competitors. I probably should have followed Aleena's pre-race sleeping plan though as a good rest sounds like heaven right about now. I am sore already and I haven't even raced yet. I am not sure how I got sore muscles in the past week but they seem to accompany the random bruises I get on a regular basis.

The race is called The Flatlanders Road Race, an apt name for a running race in Regina. There are three distances in the race: a Half Marathon, 10 km, and 5 km race. I thought it would be nice to do a "shorter" race after completing a 15 km in August and a half marathon in September so I'll be doing the 10 km race tomorrow. I am hoping to run a bit quicker than I did in the longer races. I am hesitant to announce a time goal since I am not even sure how fast I've been running lately. I really, really, really want a Garmin Forerunner so I can monitor my running pace and have a more accurate measure of how far my outdoor runs are. My birthday and Christmas are coming up...hint hint.

I have also considered getting a Nike + since I already have the shoes and the IPod. I am just not sure about viewing my IPod while running as that might be awkward. I prefer to strap the IPod onto my upper arm and it'd probably be a lot more convenient to check the pace on my wrist. So, after that little tangent, I will state a time goal as maybe it'll help motivate me to reach it tomorrow. I'd like to finish the race in 52:30 minutes or less. My pre-baby, high mileage PB was just under 49 minutes. I don't even remember how many years ago that PB was set but it's been a while.

I thought I'd share some of my favourite running resources.

The Running Room Website: You can register for an account for free and use their online training logs. I used to record my mileage in training log books but now I just enter the training runs into an online training log and it does all the calculating for me and also has some pretty charts to show my progress.

Hal Higdon's Website: When I first started to train for marathons, I bought a couple of running books. I had no idea how to run a marathon and there wasn't a Running Room in Taiwan so I was on my own. I ordered Hal Higdon's Marathon book and found it very helpful. His website has lots of training programs on it along with tons of other information for runners.

Jeff Galloway's Website: The other book I bought when I decided to run a marathon was Jeff Galloway's. It was the first time I had heard of walk breaks. I loved the idea and used walk breaks for both my marathons. The theory and logic behind walk breaks really makes sense and has helped thousands of people finish marathons when they may not have been able to otherwise. The Running Room marathon/half marathon programs also incorporate walk breaks..not sure which came first but they are very effective for longer runs/races.