tag: Mama's Ranting Now: September 2011

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Putting Together a Running Playlist for a Marathon


For the longest time I thought that it was silly to listen to music while running.  First, a lot of the running books I have read talked about how it was dangerous to run while listening to music, something about being distracted and not being able to hear what was going on around you.  Then, there was the whole idea of focusing on your form, on your breathing, and on your pace.  And of course,they reasoned, running with music made it difficult to actually enjoy the run. So I ran without music.

Yes, I actually did run without music. And while running without music, I was enjoying the scenery, saying "hi" to other runners, talking to people that were outside, and listening to the wonderful sounds of traffic nature, but the day I went on my first sixteen-mile run, I realized that I would need music to run or I would drive myself crazy.

That's when I started to research music players.  I spent countless hours trying to figure out what music player I needed, how much storage capacity I would need, and how long the batteries lasted.  In the end, I ended up picking the cheapest player I could get that was small, had a capacity of at least 8 gigabytes, and had a decent rating on the various websites.  After that, I thought I would bring the player home, put some music on it, and take it out for a run.

Little did I know that picking the music player was the easy part.  Next, I had to figure out how to put music on it.  It involved downloading software, formatting the player, figuring out how the software worked, and by trial and error I was able to get the player to start working.  Yes, now I was ready to put music on my player.

After a few more hours of loading my CD collection into my computer and transferring the music to my player, I was ready to listen to my music while running.  But wait, not all the songs I owned were good for running.  I quickly found out that a song wasn't good for running simply because I liked it.  No, it wasn't that easy.  The song needed to have the right beat.

So I started my search for good running music.  I checked various websites and asked other runners what songs they liked to listen to while running.  I learned that everyone had their own ideas about what made good running music.  I also learned a lot about beats per minute (bpm) and how important it was to find songs with the correct bpm for your running pace.

This was a good start. I was able to put together a playlist, and I began to run with music. For the record, while running with music, I was still able to enjoy the scenery, I could still say "hi" to other runners, I could still talk to other people that were running with me or were outside, and I could still hear what was going on around me. But after running to the same playlist for close to a year, memorizing not just the songs but the order they came in, and actually beginning to not like a few of the songs on the playlist, I needed to quickly come up with something different.

Therefore, I put together a new playlist for the half marathon I ran this past weekend.  It worked so well, that I decided to put together a brand new playlist for the marathon next month, but this whole experience has been harder than I imagined.  First of all, it will probably take me about five hours to complete the marathon, which means that I will need at least eighty songs on my playlist.  I need eighty songs that are good for running, that I will enjoy while running, that I like, and that I will not tire of quickly.

Currently, I'm still working on the playlist and have about sixty songs picked out.  Once I finalize the playlist, I will post it here in the blog.











Monday, September 19, 2011

Running a Half Marathon as a Training Run




This past weekend I ran the Air Force Half Marathon, and since I am currently training for the Columbus Marathon, I thought I'd use this event as a training run.  It would also give me experience using the new running belt that I was planning to use for the full marathon as well as to try out some new running strategies, namely the strategies where I just run the race for fun and don't even try to set a P.R.

The weather was amazing.  It was a clear day with no rain, which is great because I already have run two races, a half marathon and a full marathon, and a few training runs, in the rain. And although I have claimed that running in the rain is fun, I completely believe that running in clear, cool, sunny conditions is funner.

I have to say that this race was the most fun I'd ever had running, and I really love to run.  The only goals that I had set for this race were to have fun, take it easy, and finish strong.

At the start line, I lined up right behind the 2:20 pace group, since that was my finish time for my last half marathon race, and because I was hoping to run into one of my friends that ran the race last year at the same pace.  I didn't have luck finding her, but I did get a chance to meet some really cool people at the start line.

One of the most exciting things about this race are the flyovers that they have at the start of the race and during the race.  Right before the start, a parachutist came down with the American flag, and some really cool planes (I admit it, I don't know what types of planes they were, but they were pretty cool), flew overhead in formation.  Then, about three minutes later,  a wedge of geese, not to be confused with a wedge of cheese, flew overhead, and we all started to clap and cheer for them just as we had cheered and clapped for the the really cool planes that had flown over a few minutes before.

Finally, we were off, and about four minutes later, I crossed the start line.  I started out slowly.  The 2:20 pace group had taken off.  I kept reminding myself that this was just a training run, and to not hurt myself trying to set a P.R. and then not be able to run the marathon next month because I had overdone it at this race.  That would not be good, right?

Anyway, like I said, I was running slowly when all of a sudden I caught up with the 2:20 pace group.  At that point I decided that I would go ahead and stay with the group, since they seemed to be going at a leisurely pace and I was having fun hanging out with them.  The pace group leader was great at keeping everyone in the group focused and on pace.

Then, all of a sudden it was mile 8, well that's the way it felt anyway.  I was running, and then it's mile 8.  Weird, huh?  At that point I realized that maybe I had gotten faster from last year and that maybe this pace was not fast enough for me, so I picked up the pace.  I was passing people right and left, and I wasn't even trying to pass them.

Soon I was seeing people from the 2:10 pace group, and that really freaked me out.  There's no way I'm running this race at that pace, right?  Next, I'm at mile 10 and feeling strong.  Well, from this point on it's basically just a 5K race, I tell myself, so I pick up the pace again, and end up finishing the race at 2:13:31.

Okay, I was really excited. 2:13 is not going to make headlines in Runner's World magazine, but it was great news to me.  Maybe this strategy of not trying to set a P.R. is the correct strategy.  I didn't push myself, had fun, and set a P.R.

After the race I found some of my Team in Training friends.  We were hanging around, drinking our free beer and I was like, "Maybe this is the way to run a full marathon.  You run 13.1 miles, stop to eat pizza, drink some beer, and then go out and run another 13.1."  Maybe I was crazy.  Maybe I was high on endorphins, but I really felt great; however, before I actually set out to run the course again, someone handed me another beer coupon (maybe to shut me up?), so I had no need to run the race again.

This weekend, I will be running a 20-mile training run, the longest run before the actual race.  I just hope I feel at least half as good as I did after this race.





Monday, September 12, 2011

It's the Most Wonderful Time


No, I'm not talking about vacation time or free time (not that I even know what free time is), what I'm talking about is Back to School time. This year, we didn't have a great summer filled with wonderful memories, great vacations, time at the pool, or relaxing moments in the backyard.  We actually had a pretty stressful summer that actually went by too quickly.  I barely had time to do the things that needed to be done, let alone have time to do the fun things we wanted to do this summer.  Anyway, because of the terribleness of our summer, this year, Back to School time means back to a routine, back to business, and interestingly enough it has also led to more things getting done, and less stress.

Right now we're on our third week of school, and things have gone along rather smoothly.  The key has been making sure that we all get to bed early and get up early.  This way we have been able to get our school work completed before 3:00 p.m.  Makes a lot of sense, right?  I mean most schools operate this way.  The students go to school for six hours and are usually done by 3:00 p.m.  So I figured, why not?  Why not try doing things this way.

This was actually a new idea to us because as a homeschooling family, not only do we decide how we will be educating our children, we also get to set our own daily schedule.  And when you don't have someone telling you that the children have to be in school at a specific time in the morning, it's easy to start the school work later and later each day, until you push the start time all the way to noon, and end up with a hectic afternoon schedule with tired, grumpy children trying to focus on their work while all the other children in the neighborhood are back from school.

Setting a homeschool start time early in the morning has been one of the best decisions we have made for our homeschool this year, and even though we don't get to ship our children off to school for six hours a day, Back to School time has been the most wonderful time for us.