Race Results: 2013 Valentine's Day Dash

This is my third year now participating in Valentine's Day Dash. It all started by me craving a race to participate in after the winter off from race season. I figured a nice easy (and fun!) 5k around Seattle's Green Lake was a good way to kick off. February is also birthday month for one of my favorite running partner's and me. I was able to sucker her in by offering to pay her race fee as her birthday present. :)

This year my race partner bought us matching I love dawgs purple t-shirts to show our Valentine's Day and University of Washington pride. Our goal for the race was a 9:30 pace. I choose this based on the fact I run a 10:15 pace on my everyday runs. Our other goal was to not stop for a bathroom break during the race (unlike what happened last year). That was easily fixed though.

Here are our splits:

Mile 1  -  9:36
Mile 2  -  9:42
Mile 3  -  9:50
Race to the finish:  8:45

Final time 30:07, 9:43 pace. We didn't make my goal, but I had nothing left at the end. With that I know I ran my hardest.

Of course after the race with finished our annual tradition of eating a fruit omelet at one of my favorite greasy spoon breakfast places. This year I opted for a biscuit over my usual english muffin. It was a great choice.

10,000 push up challenge

February 1st marked the beginning of my participation in the 10,000 push up challenge. It's 100 push ups over 100 days. It can be broken up any way we want. All at once, or spread out through out the day. I am really hoping at the end of this I can do a real push up. That's right, I am still doing girly push ups on my knees.

One of my friends is a professional trainer. She invited me to the contest. I have already been trying to work on my push ups because after nine months of crossfit you'd think I could do a real push up, but it is just not happening. Plus if we do push ups in our daily work out, I can count them in my total for the day :) .

I'm already looking forward for the 100 days to be over and we're only three days in. Friday was the first day. My arms felt like they were going to fall off after doing 100 push ups and the snatch set we did in crossfit. Saturday, my arms were still tired from Friday. Today my arms were still tired from Saturday. I know I can make it though. This first couple weeks will be the toughest (I keep telling myself). Luckily my husband is doing it with me too, which always helps. I do get annoyed when he does extra, he wrote a little plus 30 on the check off sheet we have on the first day. Way to be an overachiever.

My strategy changes by what's going on during the day. If I work I break them up through out the day. Ten here, ten there. I don't want to have to bust out 100 push ups before bed. On my days off I have been cramming them in all at once. Mostly due to time constraints. My daughter doesn't help. She tries to climb underneath us as we are doing them, forcing us to hold a plank in the middle of a set. She's probably doing this on purpose knowing both my husband and I need to work on our ab strength.

So far so good. Only 97 more days to go.