Thumbs Up!

We did the Marshes x 1.5 for my Marathon Quality workout this morning....My fellow Rogue'ers will know what this is....for the rest...it's essentially a nasty hill workout!!....When I was doing the Half-Marathon training, we used to do just 0.5 (so one up)....As part of my Marathon training, we had to at least 1.5 and optionally 2.0 (so up down up down).....My legs were crying as I finished the workout but as always, I felt good after!!! :)

My coach talked to me at the end of the workout and told me that while running, I fold my palms into a "Thumbs Up" position and grip it tight - adding unnecessary tension!!!.....I had absolutely no idea I did that, but apparently I do it a lot...and well unfortunately....although the actual hand position has a positive connotation (~ Good Job!) and pple who run past me probably thing that I am constantly encouraging them :) , for me, it actually has negative results!! I went and looked at some of my old running pictures (and NO...I don't take pics of myself running and analyze them :)...these are from old races)...and noticed that I really do do (Chandler flashback!!) the "Thumbs Up" a lot!!....So now I need to focus on keeping my hands and palms much more relaxed while running...One of my other coaches told us to imagine that we were running with a egg in our hand and our goal should be to ensure that the egg is intact and not broken by the time we finish our run!!.....Hmm....

Other than that, we are doing 16 miles again this weekend - but this time it's going to be a much more HILLY route (yuck!!).....the run has been aptly named "The Run from Hell"....thank god I have nothing else planned for Saturday morning/afternoon....cuz this run is defn gonna put me into bedrest for at least half the day!!!

I also went ahead and signed up for Skeese Greet's...an all-women's Sprint Tri due to happen at the end of the month....so pretty psyched about that....I'm not going to be able to train that well...since my primary focus will be my running....but I hope to be much better prepared than I was for the Couples Tri! And this will be the first race I'll be doing with Sha....so I am super duper excited!!!