Sara Runs the Cape

The Willimantic Half Marathon medals were released today! I was casually hanging out on Twitter today and saw that BibRave tweeted out a picture of them. I think I squealed with excitement when I saw it. My very first medal! Naturally, I sent the picture to my sister RIGHT AWAY  and she kindly reminded me, we are exactly ONE MONTH  from race day!  One month...holy cow. I honestly cannot believe it. 12 weeks of training down. 2 more long runs to go.  I am still playing around with fueling before my runs. I thought I had it down, but I've started getting stomach aches again. So, I might go minimalist and see what happens. I think I've figured out raisins work well for me during runs.  The biggest thing I need to figure out is hydration. Not so much when or what, but how . I've been using a hydration belt I got at Marshall's last summer, which has served me well. But it's starting to fall apart. And it doesn't hold enough. So I'm on the sea...

R.I.C.E....Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. The principles of acute injury healing that have been drilled into your head since before you can even remember. I live and die by the cold pack. I love my compression garments. Elevation? Sure, why not? The Rest part is what always gets me though. I'm not a "real" runner if I'm not actually running, right? It doesn't matter if I'm training for a half marathon and consistently running week in and week out. If I don't hit my training run today, I'm a failure. At least in my head. Runners are tough. That's one thing I've learned on this journey. I've heard a lot of battle stories. I personally know 2 people that have run Boston with stress fractures (not advised, although it is Boston...) So when I started to get some back pain on my run on Wednesday I thought,  "Eh, I'll continue on. It'll go away." I finished my run and stretched out, but things still didn...

Since I'm somewhat new to the running community, I like to be as active as possible whether it be on Twitter or Instagram . So when a BibRave  #BibChat came around a few weeks ago, I decided to participate, chat it up, and meet as many awesome runners as possible. Well, long story short lucky me met a fellow Cape Cod runner- Danielle ! And Danielle was kind enough to invite me to a local run club last night. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, how many people would be there, or who I would meet. I'm not going to lie, I was nervous going into it. I had only run with another person one other time ( my sister ) and otherwise my entire running journey had been composed of solo miles. Which I was totally fine with. I like being alone when I run. I like to be alone with my thoughts and be able to talk to myself (in a non-crazy way!) when I need a pep talk. So I had never considered a run club before because I really liked running alone. But Danielle invited me and I thought...

Wow! Time sure does fly! I spent an amazing week with my honey traveling between my hometown of Chicago and his birthplace of Long Island. With all the traveling I was a little nervous that I wasn't going to get in my training runs, but I'm happy to report I stuck with my training plan! AND I got to run with my sister for the very first time ever. #FlatSara ready for 13.1 training miles! Sunday:  13.1 miles through a local forest preserve. It was tough, but we kept a steady pace throughout. I felt so lucky to be able to run with my sister and I am so glad she's going to travel out East so we can run our first official half marathon together! 13.1! We did it!   All smiles at the finish! So proud! ProCompression and chocolate milk, the recovery of champions Tuesday:   The start of my recovery week! 5 slow miles around my old neighborhood. It was excellent to run past my high school and all of my old haunts. I honestly never thought I'd see t...

Hello everyone! Sorry I've been absent for so long! And to leave on such a downer note too. My sincerest apologies. I was lucky enough to spend the last few days back home in Chicago with my family, planning my wedding, running around my old neighborhoods, and generally having fun. I have a TON of updates, but like every seasoned traveller, we returned last night only to turn around and head out to New York for the rest of the week! I'll be back at the start of next week when I promise to recap EVERYTHING that happened! And there was a lot! Until then, -Happy Running!

What a freaking shit show. Seriously. I normally hate blogging and ranting about stuff, but I am so angry I can't even take it. My stress level is probably a 12/10, my blood pressure I don't even want to know, and all I want to do is crawl into a little ball never to talk to anyone ever again. I'm just frustrated with everything and everyone right now. I'm sorry for this post. I just needed to get it out. What do you do to calm down?

This was a tough week for me. I would like to think that my half marathon training is right on pace, I'm doing all of the right things, and my runs would reflect that. Things just did not go my way this week. My head wasn't in it, my heart wasn't really in it either if I'm truly honest with myself. I don't know if I was just spreading myself too thin by trying to work 2 jobs, plan my wedding, get ready for my upcoming trip to Chicago, and then try to train on top of that but I definitely felt far more fatigued this week than in past weeks. Which led to little doubts creeping into my mind...Did I have the right training plan? Was I taking it too fast and upping my mileage too fast? Will I actually be able and ready to run a half marathon? I thought I had been pretty smart with my mileage, increasing it by a mile or so every week. I've had 2 recovery weeks. What is going on with my legs?! I know it's normal to expect some leg fatigue when training, espe...