"Run To Lose"

I started running a little over 5 years ago and my sole purpose was to lose weight.  I had always been an athlete my whole life.  I was on the swim team and played softball through high school.  I was originally on the swim team in college however I was doing an intense, accelerated program for Biology and Physical Therapy.  My academic schedule was such that I would miss practice at least 3 days a week.  I am not someone to half ass something so I made the decision to not be on the team.  Fast forward 6 years to when I was finally done physical therapy school, I had my doctorate but I also had at least 30 extra pounds.  Emir and I joined the gym and did lose a little bit of weight.

we lost some weight for our wedding but didn't keep it off

Running a Marathon is Never Easy--Philly Marathon 2015

The medals this year were AWESOME.  The bell rings

At some point in the last year or two, I lost sight of the fact that running a marathon is no easy feat.  I got it in my head that I can just go out any given weekend and run 26.2 miles, barely breaking a sweat.  I know it has a lot to do with all the ultra training we have been doing especially training for TARC100.  We were doing two 20+ mile training runs a weekend.  But even though we were doing tons of miles somehow I forgot that in the middle of that training Emir and I often said to each other that we didn't think we could run 20 miles straight without walking for a few minutes here and there.  We were just so immersed in our ultra world, running tons of slow miles on the trail, walking up the inclines and stopping at aid stations for minutes on end that we started to feel like we forgot how to run on the road especially in a race.  During my 22 mile training run a few weeks before Philly, I totally bonked and literally took 11-12 minutes per mile to finish the last mile or two which was one reason I had a feeling a PR would not be in the books come race day as I mentioned last post, I had serious doubts.

TARC100

TARC feels like so long ago at this point, that I almost forgot it ever even happened.....Almost.  It's also become one of those things, I don't even really feel like talking about it.  I think mainly because I don't know what to say.  I don't really know what went wrong.  Even though I've never DNF'd before, there's definitely races I felt that I've tanked but I always know right away the reason it didn't go well. 

Emir said taking this pic was bad luck as I took a similar one on the way to Eastern States....

OrangeMud Transition Wrap

Disclaimer: I received Orange Mud Transition and Seat Wrap as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!

I was actually pretty excited to test out the transition and seat wrap as it was something Emir and I had looked at possibly getting for our trail escapades. It's a towel that can be used for changing and a seat cover for your car.  The one edge of the towel is actually a built in belt clip so that you can secure the towel around you and it won't fall down while you change out of your gross stuff.  The belt is secure and it does stay in place, my only issue is that the towel is not really big enough for us ladies.  For guys it's perfect size but I need a bit more length to keep all the lady parts covered.

Zero Limits -- Growing my Altra collection

I was given the Altra Impulse to test by Altra and I am also an Altra ambassador.  All opinions are my own.  

Impulse

At the Runner's World Influencer event, we were each given a pair of Altras to test out.  Obviously running in Altras is nothing new to me (it's all I run in these days) however the model I was given, the Impulse, is new to me.  I've run in a bunch of different Altra models but never the Impulse.  While some people like to stick to one thing that works for them, I was excited to try something different.  Honestly, I have yet to find an Altra that I didn't like running in.  I do have my go to racing shoes but I love training in all the different ones I have and there's been several times that I've tried a different model and that ended up being my go to race shoe, so I was looking forward to seeing what the Impulse would do for me.

First run in my Paradigms was the Philly Rock N Roll Half