Productive Days and Training Evenings

Wow, I can’t believe that it’s Monday again already! Having burned out on sewing while finishing my last quilt, I decided I needed a little distance from my sewing machine. I finally got back to sewing last week and actually finished a project! Thanks to the lovely lack of light during the winter, I haven’t gotten a chance to photograph it, but hopefully this weekend. Stay tuned!

Despite being crazy busy over the weekend I was able to get some sewing time in. I finally got around to taking in two sweaters that were super boxy. I used the Adventures in Dressmaking tutorial and it worked out great! Unfortunately I forgot to take before and after pictures, so you’re going to have to take my word for it. I also started working on my Minoru again and then during the Oscars I started piecing together the panels for my afghan. All in all, it was a productive day.

Today marked the official start of training for the Broad Street Run (BSR). The BSR is a 10-mile race that starts in North Philly and ends in the Navy Yard in South Philly. The race caps at 30,000 runners and this year it sold out in 5 hours! Thankfully Nick and I were able to pre-register the day before because our health insurance company sponsors the race. Here we are at the end of last year’s BSR. I was on the verge of delirium. I love how it looks like we are all walking. We were running, I promise!

Here we are doing our last high five of the race. We high five at each mile marker to congratulate ourselves. My favorite part of this picture is the couple all of the way on the left. People get very emotional after running for ten miles!

So far this year, Nick and I have focused on getting back in shape so we would be ready for training. I’m happy to say that this is the best running shape that we’ve been in at the start of official BSR training. Running 10 miles doesn’t come easy to us, so we definitely need to take the next 10 weeks of training seriously. We use SmartCoach on RunnersWorld.com to plan out our training schedule and then try our best to stick to it. Basically you plug in the time of your last race, the distance of the race that you’re training for, and how many miles you run per week, and it formulates a customized training plan that won’t kill you. Here’s a peek at what ours looks like. Don't be alarmed: we run slowly!

Best of all, this service is free!

Once Daylight Savings hits we will be able to do most of our running outside, but until then we’ll be confined to the gym. Hopefully the weather will cooperate on Saturday so we can run our first long run outside. Otherwise I’ll be queuing up a couple of episodes of This American Life to keep me distracted on the treadmill!