Fitness

Race Recap: Crack of Dawn 8K

June 4, 2013 by Erica

crack of dawn 8k

You know you’re a crazy person when you sign up for a race called “Crack of Dawn.”

Yet that’s exactly the race I found myself running this weekend: the Crack of Dawn 8K, an all-downhill road race starting at 6 AM.

I regretted this decision slightly when my alarm went off at 4:00 on Saturday morning.

Buuut it was all good after that. It depends on the day, of course, but I’m pretty good at early wake-ups. I brewed myself some French press coffee, laced up my sneaks, and even ran the dishwasher before leaving the house at 4:30. That’s true adulthood right there.

This race was in Millcreek Canyon in Salt Lake, home to one of my favorite running trails, Pipeline. But this wasn’t a trail race; it started at the top of the canyon road and ran all the way down, finishing in the parking lot at the bottom.

Downhill races seem to be big here in Utah, where we have lots of canyons that you can run down (or up!) for miles. They even have down-canyon marathons and half marathons! I’ve avoided them because they seem like a bad idea with my history of knee injury. But naturally, since I made it my goal not to injure myself this year, it seemed like a great time to try one out. Right. My friend Jacquey convinced me to sign up… but to be fair, it didn’t take too much convincing.

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Race for the Cure 5K

May 14, 2013 by Erica

photo credit Shawn Ryan

I have a little race recap for you today! It’s been a while since I wrote one of these posts – it’s been almost 100% recipes lately. Of course I love talking about food with you, but running also feels like a big part of my life in the brief seasons between hot and cold spells here in Utah. So if it’s OK with you, let’s briefly switch gears to fitness!

I actually feel a little silly posting a race recap about this totally casual charity “race.” Most of the participants were definitely there to show support for the cause, don their most obnoxious pink outfits (never have I seen so many hot pink tutus!), and walk or jog the course. My company was running a booth and had organized a team for the race. I wasn’t too involved in the fundraising side of things, but I did think it would be a good excuse to run my first 5K of the season.

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Resolute

January 10, 2013 by Erica

Is it too late to do a new year’s resolutions post?

It will be short and sweet.

I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions. You see, will power is not really my strong suit.

But there is one thing that I”m determined to do this year, so I’ll call that a resolution: No injuries in 2013.

No injuries in 2012 was a failed mission. I hurt my hip in June and then an old knee injury flared up in September. And that’s why I’m so determined not to injure myself this year.

2012 was the year that I got back into running after an 8-year hiatus. (Jeez, how old am I?!) I was delighted to discover that I still loved running and was still pretty good at it… so I overdid it a bit. I set my sights on races, probably trained a little too hard for them, and injured myself along the way.

So as odd as it sounds, my new year’s resolution is to run less. But get more out of it.

I would still like to run all the same races I did in 2012 (a 5K and 10K in Park City, UT and a half marathon in Moab, UT). I’d even like to add another 10K in there somewhere. But I am determined not to run more than 4 days a week.

This summer, before each of my injuries, I was running 5x/week and doing yoga twice a week. Yoga is good, and I will continue to do that twice a week in 2013. But I don’t know if my body can handle so much running after being away from it for so long. So unfortunately, my plan is to cross-train on the elliptical once a week, even when it’s nice out… wahhhhh.

Right now, while it’s cold and dark and the air quality is bad, I am running 1-2x/week (and the elliptical is actually a savior). When spring comes (with daylight savings time!) and I can run when it’s light out, I’ll increase this to 3x/week. And then to 4 when I’m training for a race.

Between that, yoga, and cross-training on the elliptical, I hope to stay healthy throughout 2013! Oh yeah, and run all those races faster than I did last year.

Knock on wood, but this is one resolution I’m pretty confident in!

Yoga

November 29, 2012 by Erica

I think I’ve overdone it on the beets and butternut squash.

Is it too early in the season for that? Probably. But that’s OK… I’m moving on to soup this weekend. Maybe beets and butternut can get another rotation early in 2013.

So while I’m busy being grossed out by the foods I loved last week, it’s probably a good time to talk about yoga.

I love yoga! I’ve really gotten into it in the past 3 or 4 years, and think it’s a great complement to my running (and motivation to get in some exercise after work). When I moved to Salt Lake, I found a great yoga studio within just a few days of being here, and have been going regularly ever since.

I love the feeling of being strong. But I’m also kinda lazy… and that’s where yoga comes in. Yoga can be intense, but it can also be relaxing, and you have someone guiding you through every pose. Especially with a good teacher, yoga is enjoyable for me, and I don’t mind going 2-3 times a week. That is vastly different from weight-lifting, which I find difficult to keep up. I’ve had personal trainers in the past, and while I do develop muscle quickly from weight lifting… then I’m always too tired and sore to do the things I enjoy (like yoga and running). Yoga is probably never going to make me look insanely buff, but it does give me some upper-body strength that I definitely do not come by naturally. It also strengthens and stretches my legs for running.

During my first year in Utah, my roommate Kera and I went regularly to the Power 1 & 2 class at our studio. It’s a 90-minute class, hard but not excessively so, and the teacher loves working up to inversions and arm-balances. It’s a good balance of stretching and strengthening, and I always felt awesome after class. Then this summer, something bad happened. I hurt my hip trying to get into twig pose (twig? stick? I can never remember the difference) at class and had to stop running. It was actually really painful and took weeks and weeks to heal. So I started to rethink my approach to yoga. Maybe, if I wanted to focus on running, I should stop with these crazy poses. Just focus on strength and forget headstands and deep stretching, anything that could injure me.

So I switched from my Power class to Yoga for Athletes at the same studio. Objectively, it made sense – I was focusing on quad and core strength, which I need for running. But it was hard. At first it was hard in a good way – like “hey, I’m getting better at this!” – but then it just wasn’t fun anymore. Like, standing at the top of my mat at the beginning of class, DREADING the next 75 minutes and wishing I hadn’t come. That is not what yoga is about! I was definitely getting stronger, but I was also getting tighter, and before I knew it, my old knee injury was back in full force, keeping me from running yet again. Initially I thought that more strengthening was the solution, and I kept going to class regularly. Then, realizing how little stretching and opening we were doing in class, I started rethinking my yoga practice a second time.

So now I’m back at Power 1 & 2 – thank goodness! The first night back in that class, I realized how much more fun it was than Yoga for Athletes, and how much more relaxed I was – not at all dreading what the teacher was going to do to me over the next 90 minutes. After a month back in that class, my knee is already feeling quite a bit better, and I actually went on 2 runs this weekend! Hooray!

Basically, between yoga and running, I would choose running. But I realize that I need some strength training in my life, as well as a regular excuse to stretch and breathe deeply. Right now, yoga plays a supporting role in my workouts, but I think it’s a great hobby long-term. Someday when I’m old and gray, I hope that my bones will still be strong and I’ll still be going to yoga several times a week!

Race Recap: The Other Half 2012

October 23, 2012 by Erica

I ran my first half marathon on Sunday!

And ouch, now I hurt. But I’d say it was worth it!

I decided to do this race with a few friends about 4 or 5 months ago. I’d been looking forward to it for so long that when the time came, I couldn’t believe it was finally here! We headed down to Moab on Saturday morning and spent the afternoon and evening hanging out by the pool, visiting the race expo, and walking around downtown Moab. The town was crowded with runners and other Northern Utahns coming down to the desert for some sun, now that it’s fall and Salt Lake is getting chilly.

We had a relaxing day on Saturday and headed to bed early in anticipation of an early wake-up on Sunday. The race started at 8:30, so it could have been a lot earlier, but there were mandatory shuttles to bus us 30 miles out of town to the start of the race, meaning we had to get there much earlier than if the race had just started in town.

The morning was warmer than I’d expected, and I was thankful – until we got off the shuttle, where it was FREEZING.

Maybe it was the slight change in elevation that made it so much colder out there? In any case, it was a chilly start to the race.

The race itself was well-organized, with a speedy packet pick-up on Saturday, shuttles to the start of the race, plenty of port-a-potties beforehand (remarkable!), lots of water and Gatorade at all the aid stations, and a great finishers area with beer and food. The only hiccup seemed to involve the shuttles. Apparently they didn’t send enough shuttles to one of the pick-up locations, and had to send a few back (30 miles into town) to get the rest of the people waiting there. Those shuttles showed up after the race was scheduled to start. They held the race for them, so we started 10 or 15 minutes later than planned. That doesn’t sound too bad, but when you’re waiting out in the desert in a tank top at 8:30 am, 10 minutes seems like a LONG time!

Once the race started, the course was beautiful… although to be honest, I could only appreciate it for the first few miles. Looking around at the scenery was quickly replaced by focusing on putting one foot in front of the other!

As far as my run, I stuck to my race plan, and I think I ran as well as I could have, considering my injured knee! Amy and I started off strong and ran together for the first 5-ish miles. My splits at the beginning were:

Mile 1: 8:57
Mile 2: 8:26
Mile 3: 8:35
Mile 4: 8:39
Mile 5: 8:28
Mile 6: 8:25
Mile 7: 8:44

The first hill started at the end of that 7th mile, and I kind of broke down from there. The hills were frequent and LONG for the next 5 miles, and you can see there was definitely some walking involved by mile 10!

Mile 8: 9:30
Mile 9: 9:25
Mile 10: 10:22
Mile 11: 9:35
Mile 12: 11:08

The 2:00 pacer passed me at the mile 12 aid station. Noooooo! He had clearly been very consistent the whole race, and was just going much faster than me at that point. I had no hope of keeping up.

That mile 12 hill was a killer, but at the top were the taiko drummers! They were just the motivation I needed to keep going at the top of that hill.

Mile 13: 9:22
Last .25: 2:01

The race was totally at least 13.25 miles instead of 13.1 – brutal! I think I can safely say that making it through the last 2.5-3 miles was the hardest thing I’ve ever done physically. I know it was only a half marathon… and I can’t imagine ever running a full! After running the first 12.75 miles or so on highway 128, we turned into the Sorrel River Ranch to finish up. It was one of those finishes where you think you must be so close, and it just. keeps. going. I was so ready to be done by this point. I had been told that the final stretch on the ranch felt long, but I didn’t really appreciate that fully until I was ready to fall over and still couldn’t see the finish line.

I finally made it over the finish line in 2:01:41. Not bad for my first half! In fact, considering the fact that I hadn’t trained in over a month because of my knee, I’d say I did as well as I could have.

Happy girls!

After the race, we got our bags, snacks and free beer in Other Half pint glasses, and hung out on the grass for a bit.

It was a great finishers’ area. I’d never had beer after a race before, and although it’s nice that they had it, beer was not exactly what I wanted. And this is coming from a major beer lover! All I wanted was Gatorade. Luckily they had that too :)

So now I am back in Salt Lake, hobbling around and looking ridiculous… and already wondering whether I’d be able to run the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab in March. Of course I won’t let myself – remember how I promised myself I wouldn’t race for a year? – but the point is, I think I’m hooked.

Thanks to Nate and my family for all their long-distance support! And of course to Jacquey, Madelyn, Amy, Janelle and Carlee for making this such a fun trip.

The Other Half – I’ll see you again next year!

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