Hurricane Isaac Can Suck It!

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you already know that this last week has been a bit of a bitch. Living in the New Orleans area, we were right in the direct path of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Isaac. We decided to stay and not evacuate since we are about 40 miles north of New Orleans, on high ground, and had a 5500 watt generator and 3 A/C window units (and plenty of beer). Loading up a 10 month old and driving for 8 to 9 hours to Texas or Georgia was NOT my idea of a picnic.

Isaac came and wreaked some major havoc in various forms:

• He dumped an ass-load of water on us. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "ass-load" it means 8+ inches of water in 24 hours. It rained and rained and rained and rained....
• We had sustained winds in the 70 mph range. This equaled lots of downed trees and tree limbs.
• We lost power, but luckily for only about 36 hours (Cleco and all of the electrical response teams are BADASS!)
• I stress ate and drank for a weight gain of 2 lbs. (Doh!)
• I have not run since Sunday's long run (Double DOH!!!)

Now luckily this week in my training plan was supposed to be a step down week anyway. My long run this week is only supposed to be 5 miles. After Sunday's 15 miles my hip has been acting up. I'm thinking the rest was probably good for me, but I still have the antsy "I haven't run in days" stress going on. I was determined to go out today for an easy 3 or 4, but today's stress of clean-up, job response and Baby Z's crawl-a-thon just wore me out. So, I decided to drink a beer instead. :) Yeah...bad...I know.

Training has been going well though.  I've been killing my long runs. I've run several 9's and 10's and even pushed my 10 miler to 15 on Sunday. I was helping a friend get to 45 miles. That's right....FORTY-FIVE miles of running. If you don't follow @KerrieAnnFrey you SHOULD. She is just so awesome and inspiring and I want to be like her when I grow up. That's me on the left in the blue. Kerri is the bad-ass on the right. My hip's been a bit cranky since that run. I've been stretching and rolling it. Hoping it cooperates for tomorrow's 6 miles.

In good news, lookie what I found at the grocery store!!! You know what this means...Fall is here! Fall is here! Well...almost. After my first Starbucks pumpkin spice latte (#PSL) then I consider Fall officially here. I figured a six-pack of this was appropriate seeing as we are experiencing a true, blue moon tonight.

That's all I have for now.

Today I love: How a hurricane makes you appreciate the basic essentials we take for granted.

Jazz Half Marathon training week #1

Holy crap where did the summer go!!?? I've been lounging and hitting the pool and drinking daiquiris in the bag (Have you SEEN these things??? They are AWE-SOME!) and letting summer just cruise on by, knowing that fall half marathon training was creeping up fast. Now I was running...but not "RUNNING".  I've mainly just been doing some maintenance stuff (read: sitting on my butt or schlogging through a run). I woke up on Sunday and thought I'd better check on a training plan for the upcoming Jazz Half Marathon. I realized then that it's 13 weeks away! 13 WEEKS PEOPLE!! That's not much time!! ACK!

This is the first half marathon, post-pregnancy, that I plan to RUN - not fun-run - I mean, really balls-out train for and run. I have set a pretty lofty time goal for myself. Not so lofty for my pre-Baby Z-self, but lofty for my fat-butt-out-of-shape-still-have-some-baby-weight-left self. I'm both excited and nervous about this race. I have all of the self-doubt issues creeping into my head, but I'm going in with the attitude of try your hardest and enjoy the outcome (but I really want to kick-ass).

I plugged my goal time and training preferences into the nifty Runner's World Smart Coach app. It's a little expensive for an app, but has some nice feature and chugs out a pretty nice training plan. This is what the little running dictator is telling me I need to get done this week:

Monday: 4 miles easy
Tuesday: Rest or X-train
Wednesday: 5 mile tempo (1 mile w/u, 3 miles tempo, 1 mile c/d)
Thursday: 4 miles easy
Friday: Rest or X-train
Saturday: 8 miles long run (slow and easy pace)
Sunday: Rest or X-train

Total mileage: 23 miles

I got Monday's and Wednesday's runs done. And I actually ran 6 today instead of the required 5. Yup. I'm an overachiever. But no-one seemed to inform Mother Nature that ultra high humidity is NOT preferred when Jen is training for a half marathon. These runs KICKED MY BUTT! I ran 6 last week with somewhat ease when we had a cool spell. Well, I was barely able to do 4 easy this week. Blergh. Now, I did it and I know some of what went wrong was due to fueling issues and only 5 hours of sleep (thank YOU Baby Z). Gawd, I sure hope this gets easier though. COME ON FALL WEATHER!!!!

In other news I forgot my Garmin on my 6 miler today. Not a total tragedy since I knew the route and knew where the 3 mile turnaround was, but I'm a data nerd and like to see pace, avg. pace, calories burned (so I know how many cupcakes I can eat), etc...blah, blah, and so on and so forth. It then hit me, "Hey - you have one of those smart phone thingies! There's got to be a free (emphasis on free) app that will do all of that!" Sure enough, one quick search later I found the MapMyRun app and downloaded it. And I'll be damned if that thing wasn't accurate! I DID have to turn on my GPS on my phone which I do NOT like to do (in case the Russians want to pinpoint my location and launch a missile up my rear) but it was a nice little app! All kinds of data read outs to take my mind of the life-sucking humidity. Ahhh...technology...how I love thee.

Today I Love: O.N.E Coconut Water - great post long(ish) run fuel.