Down By the Bay Tot Trot (2022)

Miles and Liam ran a tot trot. Miles ran up ahead by himself.  Liam ran holding my hand. Liam ran the entire way. On the hills he kept saying "I love running up hills." I can't believe Liam ran the entire thing except one spot when he asked for water. I'm so glad I had water in my pocket. Miles asked for water last time mid race but I didn't think about it prior.  

Dave almost made us late. Then they started late. So it was hard to get good pictures.  I didn't pay to have Ella run it since she'd be the oldest in the age rage and a big kid and already doesn't love running. I'm not sure how happy or mad she was about it. I mean sometimes she was happy and sometimes upset she wasn't running it. 


I kept seeing race photographers but mostly they weren't taking pictures so that bummed me out. 

There are a few videos that you can see in my google photos album. The race had a photo album but we weren't in any.

Running Stats

I keep track of a lot of running stats. NRC also has some good running stats. Mapmyrun does too but not through the app. Garmin has stats but it's weekly or 4 weeks or 52 weeks not on calendar months so I never like it as much. 

I keep not posting because auto backup doesn't work for google photos on my app. Manually clicking to backup a photo so I can add it, never works. I click it and it is trying to backup for 5 minutes then doesn't. I took all these screen shots on my computer which takes longer but then I was able to upload them at least. 

I bet nobody will care about this but me but I love to look back on snapshots in time and love my old data posts. 

I have had years worth of data for awhile but I recently added number of runs and average distance per run. I ran a lot to preschool in 2018 and thus had a lot of 1 mile runs lowering that average. Also when Ella was in kinder I would sometimes run .2 to get to her or even .6 if I ran away from our house then back to school so it had a lot of low distances averaging in. 

I also added the current date and then % through the year to see if I'm consistent with how much I've run so far what my projected yearly miles will be.  I am definitely not consistent since I can't seem to get as long of runs in here no matter how hard I try since I can't do mid week runs worth any sort of distance.  I have been increasing the average run per day the last few weeks. It kept going down since May. The highest projection for the year was 952 if I remember correctly so I am going down without my nice long runs. (I went back and looked and it was 977.) 779 would be my highest year yet.  I started this year with a goal to have my average pace be faster than 2015 and I am constantly improving and am now decently ahead. For awhile I wasn't. But I guess not having super long runs = I run at a faster pace more often.  

Just looking at this now I kind of want to go back and add projected number of runs for the year.... so now I'm stopping writing this to go add that :) The answer is 203 total runs for 2022...That's my highest. My run streak for the last 25 days upped that average. 

Then I have this very similar but also different chart. It has greens and the brighter the green the further I ran and also the faster my pace is. I started adding longest run to this just last week. I don't have all the years but did a few. In 2011 I ran a marathon so that will be my longest run there. None of the other ones are that long. On no I just noticed the current year isn't green for time or pace... fixing that.  I wasn't going to re-upload it but then I decided to so it's below.

I just went back to the spreadsheet and added the longest run column to the previous table too. 

I only left the screen shot in above since I talked about it. 

I like breaking apart the data by month to see improvement or changes. I got covid in June and moved in June. I started a 1 week run streak in July and kept it up for something like 25 days now! I think I will stop at a month of doing it. (I was going to stop July 31 but didn't.) But I might have to keep going until after Beth quits hers. I started my run streak 12 days after she started hers. 
Moving corresponding to a month change makes it easy to have CA miles and WA miles too.  Then I decided to do average distance per day since I knew I was running a lot more before. The 1.58 in WA has increased a lot with the run streak.  Treadmill miles have certainly helped my average pace in WA. 

I like looking at my day of the week stats too. A long run is almost always on the weekend and then the other weekend day was a rest day.  I haven't looked into why Wednesdays have the slowest pace. I would think long runs should be the slowest. But also randomly running with kids on bikes happens midweek.  I know I have a screen shot from a month or 2 ago of the day of the week runs. It'd be fun to see the difference before my run streak.  

Time to go look for one. 

And I found one for the day before I started my run streak! I am really liking how I thought ahead and have the date in the screen shots. Go me.  It's no surprise that every average run distance went down.

When I moved I added location with WA in the title. I also separated WA and CA here. I forget if I did this one before the other one or after. I actually think I did it first.   The Treadmill pace is helping my overall pace. But the trail pace is pretty good so it's not horrible. It is flatter. The neighborhood is so hilly and I run those runs sometimes with kids so it's even worse for average pace. Maybe I should do a few more neighborhood only runs just to decrease that average pace. 

I just recently added "No Goal" because sometimes I have a quick run and then I was leaving the column blank. I still have to go back and fix some old ones to know if I just forgot to fill out the info. I went back and most I Forgot to fill out. Now instead of 23.2 mi it is 7.41 unaccounted for. Now I finished. I'll put the new screen shot below and then just swapped out the original next one for the updated one so it no longer has 18.21 miles that wasn't filled out.   I mainly did a new screen shot because Yes shouldn't be 6:00:00 so it had the wrong number format so the new one is below!

I kind of like that I was too fast sometimes and not just too slow. Sometimes it was hard to say and I might have been too fast for a few intervals but if it was mostly on track I marked it as yes. 

I often cut runs short but if I cut short the cooldown or warmup I mostly say it is a yes since I got the meat of the workout done. Often my run streak runs have no plan so instead of leaving them blank I put no plan or if I ran with the kids. But sometimes my plan is to only run a mile so then I don't know what I should put!

My weekly stats. I put a thicker line to separate the CA and WA runs. 

I also keep track and make little tables for lots of the runs that are not "Easy Runs"  I use emojis. Two runners means I ran too fast. A thumbs down means I ran too slow. 

There are not many tempo runs prescribed per training plans so I believe these are all I've ever run. 

I just started the stride repeats table this week and went back to a few old ones just to check. 

Goal pace runs are fun to look at too. Warmup is often slower for me so I like seeing what I actually ran during the fast part of the workout. 

Speed repeat runs often have me analyzing data longer than it took to run the runs.   Note the "Pace" is taken from Garmin and not done by math on the distance completed. You can tell or all the paces would be the same for the same distance. 

Here's another speed repeat screen shot too since those are so fun. 

I went back into Garmin ( and later Strava) and added some segments. At first I just did the uphill but later added the first part of the uphill that is much steeper. 

I have run the segment 20 times. Now on my way home I don't try alternate routes because I like to compare. 

Here is to the bend. 

Here is it not zoomed in the entire way.  

Uphill is still tough but it is a lot easier than it was a month ago.  Sometimes if I had a speedy workout earlier I'm more dead on the uphill and then the easy runs might actually be much faster on the uphill. There are also times like yesterday where I had part of the fast part of the run on the uphill so then once that was done I walked 3x longer than my normal run break making the segment pace much slower even though the first part was way faster than normal. 

In addition to tracking runs, I also track other things I do based on my workout goals for the month. 

Mostly those goals contribute to goals I posted for exercise goals but then I do update them too. I can update the next months goals all the way until the 1st of the month and once the 2nd hits, I can't update or change them. Sure bummed me out when I got injured on Nov 3 so then I missed all my goals!  When I sprained my ankle on the 26th of the month, I was able to update my goals for the next month. I learned from 2021 that if I miss a month, I should try to make up those missed things or else I don't hit my yearly goals. 

I started the bottom section to show if I was on track for the month. Sometimes it's hard telling on the above even after I added percent of the way through the month so the top only highlights green when I hit 100% and the bottom highlights if I'm past the percent through the month. 

Here's the yearly data. I have goals in for the entire year but do update each month as the month comes up. I missed 2 in 2020 and 1 in 2021. 

In 2021, here were ones I missed as the month happened. I had 2 surgeries in June but then I guessed wrong as to how much better I'd be in July.

I missed a lot in 2020. Nov 3, is when I injured my elbow. I also believe I sprained my ankle at the end of May and then again the same ankle at the end of July. I had a hip injury at some point too. I was full of injuries. I would just get one thing better and do my last day of PT and then injure myself another way.  The elbow wasn't really an injury but cellulitis and bursitis and not even easy or common ones. It wasn't reaction to antibiotics and oh what fun it was. NOT! I went to the doctors so much and then having a rigid splint made my shoulder worse and I had to go to PT for that. 

I bet nobody read this entire thing but if you did, what do you think? 

Wild Waves (8/2/22)

We went to Wild Waves for the third time. This time it was just 3 kids and me. Since there were not 2 adults, I said we were not going to go into the swimming area at all. We spent almost 5 hours there and didn't even go on every ride. A few key main rides were closed! 

The day mostly went OK except when I was on the Ferris Wheel with Liam and Ella and Miles started fighting after they got off. I was about to get off and was close and yelling at them to break it up. They didn't stop. Another mom had to leave line to yell at them. 

It was warmer than I thought. In the morning it was cool. The park has a severe lack of water fountains. They don't allow you to take in water bottles. They claim to take in empty ones but it's so hard to fill and refill them. 

Liam's favorite ride is the Ferris Wheel. It's definitely my least favorite. 

7.14.22 Park

We often leave the house and go to 3 different parks before returning home. I often take 0-2 pictures at the park. I decided to shoot some videos and compile them since I don't capture nearly as much as much as I used to. 

I compiled all videos and it was 8 minutes so I trimmed some stuff out and it's still 4 minutes. 

10k Training plan

Once one Garmin Training Plan ends, I start a new one. Since I had a really bad May and June with running, I set up the training plan for a 10k. I have done 3 half marathon training plans but didn't run a single half marathon race. I had to shorten 2 races and 1 training plan was a lead up to a longer race. 
Lately the training plan is not very confident in a 58 min 10k. That's the time I made up. I almost hit 60 min 10k in May without trying super hard so I thought 58 might be doable. The hills here get me though. 

I keep making nice spreadsheets of different types of runs and how I did but then when I screen shot it, they never upload to google since auto backup doesn't work and my storage is almost full. When I try to manually upload them, that never seems to work either! I managed to upload a recent one but I've done more. I like the little snap shots. I also made sure to do the little table this time because I accidentally had my watch set to .25 vs 1.0 so then it split up each 3 minute segment. I was never sure if i made it or not.  After doing this workout above, I learned strava was cool with the laps but also shows the mile splits. I got mad that garmin never would give me mile splits with the laps. It's funny that Strava does since it just gets the data from Garmin. 

I made up the training plan but maybe I can actually find a race to do. I just need to find one right around September 17. 

I also added a Garmin Segment for the first time. Now when I run back up the hill at the end of the run, I can see how I do. I was trying out the various streets but nothing was way better than the rest. Now I just run the same way so that I can compare the segments. I made a spreadsheet super confused why i couldn't view them all at once on the Garmin app. Here the laptop I was on would show more than 1 but just based on everything else and the pop up window size it only showed me 1. Then my other laptop showed 2. 2 still isn't enough. I have yet to try it on my desktop. 

Below is this week and next week on the training plan. I actually did 2 quick miles on treadmill not shown here since I just did run vs workout plan. 

Mermaid 10k (4/30/22)

I was supposed to run 18 mi but got hit with a cold. I almost didn't go but since Stephanie was doing it, I went and changed to 10k. I still can't believe my speed while sick got me 4th in my age group. 

I pretty much did everything what you shouldn't do prior to a race. 

It's been over a month and I didn't type the rest of this post.  I had 12 hours of sleep total for 3 days prior to the race. I had to fly twice the day before the race! 

I got there too early for a 10k start time but I already had my alarm set and was awake so I went and then tried to nap in the car but failed. 

Since I changed to the 10k, I got to run with Stephanie. She barely trained but could have gone faster since I was going a sick speed. 

I'm so mad I got sick because I could have placed for the 18 mi in my age group. I could have placed for the half marathon too. 

My training plan had the run as an 85 min progression run. I decided to use that run to force myself to finish strong and just hit lap so I could end early.  I didn't end up hitting lap early enough so I had 9 min and 1 min segments at the end vs 10 min and 5 min.  About half way through my breathing was shot because of being sick. I was not a fan!

Stephanie came in 3rd for our age group and I came in 4th. 2nd place was really close so if we were less 40 seconds faster we'd have had 2nd and 3rd. 

I ran with a kleenex in my hand at all times. When I saw the photographer I tried to hide it away. I often had to swap kleenexes after I fully soaked one.  Stephanie ran beside me the entire time. She never did get a cold so that's good.  It was definitely more fun running a 10k with a friend than an 18 mi race solo. I was supposed to run the 18 mi race with Beth but her Dualthon got moved so she couldn't do both. 

Official results have me finishing at 1:01:15. My Garmin has slightly longer. I must not have stopped it on-time. My Garmin had the race distance a little short too. NRC was even a little shorter than Garmin!

Before and after my race, I wore my mask so I didn't get other people sick. I felt like people probably thought I was an insane COVID masker and not sick.  (I ran beside Stephanie and she never got sick. wohoo)

Now another month has passed and I didn't post this. I had waited for the official photos and added them and then didn't post!

After Stephanie and I ran past the photographer I told her we should have made sure our strides were together. They weren't so we don't have a good stride photo with both of us. It's funny that that is what I thought of just after we passed. Just before we passed I said, let me put my klneexes away. 

The race provided photos for free. I love when they do that. Mermaid races are run so well, have nice parking, and mostly provide photos for free. If I wasn't moving, I'd do all the Mermaid Series races next year too.