Today is my third wedding anniversary! The traditional wedding gift for the third anniversary is leather, but you will have to wait until tomorrow to find out what I got Barry because he hasn’t opened it yet!

Barry and I were married on June 26, 2010 on the Virginia Tech campus, about a month after I graduated from college. Barry graduated from Tech in 2007. We met in a class called Appalachian Studies. We were both taking the course to meet a general requirement for all students. Lucky for me, I was taking it my freshman year and he left it until his senior year.

Our ceremony was held in War Memorial Chapel on the Drillfield.

We held our reception across the street in Owen’s Banquet Hall. We invited the Hokie Bird (VT’s mascot), and he was kind enough to attend. We did a special entrance to ‘Enter, Sandman’, which is the song the football team runs onto the field to. Friends and family lined up on either side of the doors and jumped up and down, and the Hokie Bird led the way.

My little sister surprised us with a photo montage with pictures of Barry and me as kids and our families.

 Barry and I had our first dance to the song Then by Brad Paisley.

After that I had my father daughter dance with my Dad. We danced to the song ‘My Little Girl’ by Tim McGraw. He felt the song was a little too long and asked me why I picked such a long song during the dance 🙂

Barry and his mom had their mother son dance to ‘Oh What A Night’ and the Hokie Bird joined in.

I had three bridesmaids: my best friend (my MoH), my little sister, and my sister-in-law.

Barry’s dad was his best man and two of his friends were his groomsmen.

Today I headed back to the track for some speed work, and decided to do a pyramid workout instead of repeats of a specific distance. I got the idea from Deb over at Deb Runs. At the end of April I asked for your guidance on how to start doing speed training on the track. I got a lot of great responses and valuable information and used it to complete my first track workout at the start of May. A couple days later Deb had a great post called Love to Hate Speed Work that had all kinds of information and pointers about track workouts, as well as example workouts of what she had her runners do. One of those was a pyramid workout, and I filed it away for later.

Were there enough links in that paragraph for you?? 🙂

Pyramid-style workouts are not a new concept to me. I grew up as a competitive swimmer and I have done many, many pyramid sets during practices over the years. I always liked them because during the first half of the workout your main focus is getting to the peak distance and then I always felt like I could push even harder on the back half of the set (as the distance decreased). I was looking forward to finding out if the same thing applies with my running. Spoiler alert: it does.

The plan for the workout was: 200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, 800m, 400m, and 200m with a 400m recovery in between each interval. I used the McMillan Running Calculator to figure out what paces to aim for on my 200m and 1600m intervals, since I hadn’t run those distances on the track before. Mr. McMillan told me that based on my most recent 5K time I should aim for 45 to 52 seconds for the 200m and 8:24 to 8:39 for the 1600m. I knew from past workouts my goal for the 400m and 800m should be the low 1:50’s and low 4:00’s, respectively.

Going for the record for most links in a blog post here.

So with all that being said, I headed to the track with Barry in tow. We did an 800m warm-up, stretched, and then got to work.

200m- 0:48
400m- 1:45
800m- 3:56
1600m- 8:24
800m- 3:56
400m- 1:45
200m- 0:44

How about that for even splits? I actually did the first half of the workout on my own, while Barry did his own thing. He ran with me from the 1600 on and really helped me hit those times during the last intervals.

I was terrified of the 1600m interval. The last time I did a timed mile was in high school and “Mile Monday” has never been a fond memory of mine. It went well, though. We ran the first 2 laps at a steady pace and then dropped it down a bit from there.

Overall I’m happy with how this workout went. I feel like I ran strong and I’m happy that I came in at or under all of my goal paces. My marathon training has me doing one run a week where the middle miles are “marathon pace” miles. I’m guessing this is kind of like a tempo run, so I’m not sure yet how I will make the track workouts fit. Going to the track will probably be an every other week thing, since it does have a tendency to beat up my calves and shins.

High five for another track workout in the books!

If you played high school sports, did you have “Mile Monday” or an equivalent?

Who else is hitting the track or doing some speed work this week?

What sports did you play as a kid growing up? If you didn’t play any, what activities did you do?
Swimming and soccer as a kid. Field hockey, swimming, lacrosse (only for 2 years), and soccer in high school.

The majority of the races we run are usually morning races. Every once in awhile the opportunity arises to run a night race. Mixing it up can be a lot of fun, but it also mixes up how you would normally prepare for a race. On race day you may find yourself wondering how to eat for your race. Here are some tips on what works for me for a night race, with specific examples of what I did leading up to this past Saturday’s 5K, which started at 8:30 PM.

1. Eat a good breakfast. You want to eat a good breakfast that’s not too high in fats, as those will stay in your system longer. Stick to things that you would normally eat. On Saturday, I had scrambled eggs mixed with a little bit of cheese and salsa on top. I also had a piece of toast. I drank my usual morning coffee and had half a bottle of Fuze Banana Colada.

2. Eat a lighter lunch. Again, make sure you stick to foods you typically eat. As always, nothing new on race day! This tip works well for an evening race, but since Saturday’s start time was closer to my bedtime, I ate a larger lunch. I had a chicken sandwich and some fresh fruit.

3. Make sure to hydrate throughout the day. Keep a bottle of water with you to sip on throughout the day. Be sure not to overhydrate!

4. Stick to your normal pre-race routine. If you normally eat a bagel with peanut butter two hours before your race, you should do the same for a night race. I typically eat a Power Bar about an hour before a race. But sometimes I’ll eat a Cliff Bar or a Luna Bar. Before Saturday’s race I had a Luna Bar about an hour before start time.

It’s also a good idea to practice running in the evening at race time, if you’re usually a morning runner. This will give you a chance to practice running at that time of day and to test out how certain foods will work for you. When I am training for a specific goal race, I will try to do many of my Saturday morning long runs at the same time as the race start time. The same principle applies for a race with an evening start time.

Most of my weekday runs take place in the evening, and in the summer time they can sometimes be as late as what Saturday’s start time was. I eat a normal breakfast and lunch during the week, and then usually have a small snack before my evening run. But for a race, you add the inevitable nerves and you have to be a little more conscious of what you put in your belly.

I have run a few other races that had start times sometime other than the morning. Last October I ran the Haunted Half Marathon in Kingsport, TN. It had a start time of 4 PM. I followed the above guidelines, except on that day I DID eat a light lunch since the start time was in the afternoon.

The Blacksburg Classic 10 Mile is another race that has an odd start time. Since this race is run in February, and it’s often pretty cold here in Virginia, the start time is 1 PM. I ate breakfast as normal and then ate a Power Bar about around Noon, an hour before the race.

When it comes down to it, never try anything new on race day! Try and mimic your usual pre-race routine as close as possible.

Have you ever run a night race? If so, how did you prepare throughout the day?

What other tips would you add?

I thought by now I would be running out of things to share with you. It surprises me that I continue to have new things to tell you about this week, but I do! This week I discovered that the chickens have finally gotten large enough to get up on the roosting poles to sleep.

The above picture is how I found them in the coop when I went to let them out one morning. We installed the roosting poles with the intention of having the chickens sleep up there. In the wild, it is their natural instinct to sleep up in the trees to protect themselves from predators.

When the chickens first moved into the coop, we put them up on the poles for fun. They weren’t big enough to get up there themselves and needed our help getting down as well.

Not everyone is sleeping up on the poles yet, though. Agnes (the white one) seems to prefer the red strap, which is what we use to keep the gate into the chicken run area closed. I don’t know how that’s comfortable. Reba (the red one at the bottom) seems to prefer roosting on the green Rubbermaid tub.

We built that shelf under the roosting poles with the intent to keep a tray there that can be cleaned more frequently than the rest of the coop. The chickens tend to make the most amount of droppings while roosting, so it’ll be good to be able to clean the area under the roosting poles more often. Now that they’re getting up there on a regular basis I need to put that tray in!

The chickens also tried some more new food this week. I had some rye bread that was going stale, so I tore up a couple of pieces of it and gave it to them. They seemed to enjoy it.

Except Cecilia, who spent the whole time looking up at me while I snapped a few pictures (see above and below).

See what I mean??

This evening Barry and I headed up to Blacksburg to run the Downtown Sundown 5K. This race is part of the Summer Solstice Fest in Blacksburg. I have run this race one other time, back in 2009, and had a lot of fun. The race starts at 8:30 PM and runners run with glow sticks. It’s fun to mix it up and run a race at night.

We got up to Blacksburg around 7 PM to pick up our packets. We grabbed our packets and then had about an hour to kill before the start, so we walked around the festival for a little bit and looked at all of the booths. There were food vendors, craft vendors, a stage with a live band, and a kid’s carnival area with some games and rides.

Once we were done walking around we headed back to the car to drop off our race packets, pin on our bibs, and get ready to race! I don’t know why I did the two thumbs up? I do have my pink/purple glow stick on my right wrist, though!

As it got closer to 8:30 we meandered over to the start area and lined up. With the command of “Ready, Go!” we were off. Mile 1 was mostly uphill and I tried to just run a steady pace. This whole race was run on roads and a trail that I know like the back of my hand. Although I didn’t have the race course memorized, I knew exactly what to expect each time we made a turn.

Elevation Profile provided by the race organizers

Mile 2 was downhill and flat, and I tried to pick it up even more. As I passed the mile 2 marker I started to feel that bad “I’m going to be sick” feeling in my stomach from running hard. But my legs still had more left, so I pushed on through mile 3. There were a few more hills in mile 3, but then it was a net downhill to the finish.

I crossed the line in 26:49, a new 5K PR and an overall average pace of 8:37/mile. I guess those speedwork sessions have been paying off.

My splits were: 8:46, 8:34, 9:28 (which is 8:36 pace for the last 1.1). I am very happy with my time and feel like I ran a good race. Running in the evening was fun and I definitely feel like I run better! Barry ran a great race, too, finishing in 21:24 and third place in his age group.

The above picture is him with his age group award medal. I am a terrible photographer in the daylight so I pretty much have no hope in the dark. That picture was also taken with my phone, since my camera battery died.

We hung out for a bit and took some shadow people pictures before heading home.

Overall a solid race for both of us. I looked up my time from 2009 and I ran 31:21, so a definite improvement. I guess a few consistent years of running will do that for you.