This year will mark my husband's and my 25th wedding anniversary. I once met a woman who said that birthdays can be taken for granted but anniversaries should be celebrated because you have to work for those. Like anything else, some days are more work than others, and 25 years is a lot of practice! The group of foodservice directors I used to meet up with often (most have now retired) used to clarify when we would announce our upcoming wedding anniversaries with "to the same guy!" It is a reason to celebrate; no one announced their own birthdays, but were happy to accept and extend good wishes on anniversaries. Bobby and I had one of the worst/most adventurous honeymoons ever back in 1994. Any vacation that involves the ER, car repair, the cops (x2) and a realtor is not going to turn out well. We came home early ill, homeless, 2 new bikes short and a speeding ticket to pay. Needless to say, it took ten years to venture out on another vacation just the two of us. Since then, we've enjoyed vacations on some of our bigger anniversaries to Seattle and Vermont. It took months, but we have finally settled on a destination for the 25th--Portland, Maine. While our anniversary is in August, we will be traveling in October and hopefully catching the changing of the leaves in Maine. We are planning to fly out on a Saturday and I will be running the half marathon as part of the Maine Marathon on Sunday morning. Besides the race which looks like it will have beautiful scenery on the out and back course, we are looking at mackerel fishing, whale watching, eating lobster and visiting lighthouses as possible excursions. Because of the location of the race, we splurged a little on a downtown hotel that is walking distance to the race as well as the ocean.
While there were options for both a half and full marathon at this event, I decided that I would like to focus on building speed and strength for a half vs distance training for a full marathon. I looked into several programs and decided on Hal Higdon's Advanced (maybe they should call it "Experienced") program because it had a nice balance of speed and distance. One of the things that will be really different for me is that the weekend long runs are by time rather than miles. That was really nice yesterday when it was hot--no pressure to keep going longer than the 90 minutes no matter the pace. Other weeks when I feel particularly good or the weather is ideal, maybe I'll get more mileage in the same amount of time but either is fully completing the workout. During the week there are runs that are faster intervals, tempo runs and occasional runs at race pace. We booked our trip just in time for me to do Week 1 already this week. Eleven more to go! Summer vacation is about halfway done. I have done a lot so far this summer but am glad it's not time for school to start again just yet so I can do even more fun and/or ambitious things. Unfortunately, the days are already getting a little shorter. Maybe another week or two and I'll need reflectors on 5:00am runs and then comes the headlamps when it stays dark for most of the early runs. In the meantime, I try not to complain about hot weather because it will get colder all too soon. Besides, I have the treadmill option in our air conditioned basement if I feel like I can't do the heat or humidity. Enjoy your summer fun and happy running--Missee
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AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
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