It’s official! I’m a MANIAC!!!! WOOHOO!!!! Maniac #5306

An official Marathon Maniac that is!!!! I received my confirmation email over the weekend from one of the founders of the group and it said this:

Jaynee, at last you have found refuge, a place where you can call home, where the Insane can feel Sane again, and once again be treated like a normal human being.

Welcome To The Marathon Maniacs InSane AsyLum!!!!

For those of you who don’t know who the Marathon Maniacs are, it’s a group of marathon runners who are obsessed with running marathons (26.2 miles).  To be a member, you have to meet specific criteria.   I’m at the bronze level.  I ran two full marathons with only six days in between the races last year.  I originally wanted to apply after I ran the six marathons I signed up for this year between February and July but I got preggos so that’s not going to happen : )  I can always upgrade my level when I meet the criteria so that’s fine with me.  I mean, besides other maniacs, I haven’t met anyone else who ran two marathons in two consecutive weekends : )  I’m pretty proud of myself.

Now it’s time to apply for the Half Fanatics.  Gonna apply this weekend. : ) haha.

I miss running…

So I decided to make myself feel better and create a Personal Records’ Page. Hehe. It’s located on my side bar.

I’m a runner.  It all comes natural to me.  Thinking about my PR times makes me realize how much faster I can get if I actually “trained” for these races.  Maybe that should be my goal for 2013- to focus on training for specific races rather than just running a bunch of  them for fun : )  I’m thinking this will probably happen for 2013 since I won’t have all the free time to just pick up and go to races once the twins are born. hehe.

NWM 2012 ; (

Just found out this morning that my group didn’t get selected for the 2012 Nike Women’s Marathon.  I was so looking forward to running this race as it would be my first race back post-pregnancy.  I’m sad : (

I’m so excited for MY UPCOMING Twinathon!!!!

So… I had to scale back on running and training in November when I found out I was PREGNANT!!!!  We’re having TWINS!!!!!   Since I’m carrying twins, I’m considered a “HIGH-RISK” pregnancy and my doctor advised me to not run and need to take it easy.  Actually, she told me to not really run and to plan on not running the marathons i signed up for. haha.  Hence, the reason why I didn’t run the Las Vegas Marathon in December and WILL NOT BE RUNNING THE 6 FULL MARATHONS THAT I’VE ALREADY SIGNED UP FOR THIS YEAR.  Although this pregnancy surely caught me by surprise, I’m truly blessed to experience this miracle of creating not one, BUT TWO lives!!!!

My plans for 2012 were already set.  I was looking forward to running the Seattle and Chicago Full Marathon this year, getting accepted to Boston University Art Education Graduate program (my second MA DEGREE!!! YAY),  traveling to Boston over the summer to complete an Art Ed course, going on a trip to Europe (Amsterdam and Italy) with my Husband, going to Jamaica in September for my cousins Bachelorette Party, purchasing our first home this spring, then, when I got this all out of my system, my husband and I were going to start trying for a baby : )  at the end of the year.

Along with my BIG plans for 2012, I’m also working on some current projects and goals for the year.  Here are just a few of them:

1)  Getting an Art Credential to teach art, photography, and art history next year.  This consists of passing two crazy tests that have over 50 multiple choice questions each, 3 essay questions,  a drawing portion, and submitting my art portfolio.  I’ve already passed one but was 5 points short of passing the second one.  I’m a high school history teacher right now but would like to teach art.  I received my BA in Art History and I think it’s time I get back into my roots : )

2)  Putting an Art Show together of the photos I took during my summer trip to the Philippines.  Yes, I still shoot with a film camera and develop my photos in a darkroom.  I worked on a project this summer where I shot with plastic cameras.  I’m calling this show Philippines through a plastic lens. hehe.

3)  Connecting with an Art Gallery to show case my student’s art work.  DONE!  I just met with the director and curator of the Hayward Historical Museum and my students’ art work will be showcased in an exhibit this spring! YAY!

4)  Attending the California Partnerships Academy in February to showcase and present my students’ multimedia projects that they have created in my Visual Communications through Digital Media Art class to educators from California.

5)  I’m part of a History curriculum planning group in Alameda (I’ve traveled with them to the south to do research on the Civil Rights Movement and meet organizers from that moment in history, etc), and we’ve been invited to present to teachers in March about creating curriculum through lesson study.

6)  As the Internal Education Officer for Babae, which is a grassroots community organization that I am part of, looking forward to putting out some awesome educational (political, social, cultural, etc.) workshops for our members.

7)  I’ve taking up Knitting again.  I’m determined to take my knitting and purling skills to the next level ; 0

Yes, you could say I’m a pretty ambitious individual.  I’ve always been a free-spirited person, my own individual and for me that means I know what I want in life and I work hard to get it.  And I guess, with my personality I didn’t feel any rush to start a family when me and my husband got married even though I’m in my early 30′s.

So my plans for 2012 are going to take a shift in direction.  For the most part, I can still complete most of my smaller plans/goals for the year but now my whole focus for the next 6 months is to prepare for the TWINATHON!

http://twinathon.tumblr.com/

 

2012 Race Line-up

The 2012 year is coming up and I’m all set with the races that I’ll be running next year, well as far as the Full Marathons that I’ll be participating in.

Drum roll please….

February 2012- Surf City Marathon (confirmed)

March 2012- New Orleans Marathon & San Diego Half Marathon (confirmed)

April 2012- Big Sur Marathon (confirmed)

May 2012- OC Half Marathon (???) I want the  beach cities challenge medal and was planning on running the FULL but this course looks really boring might change it to the half.  Also, I’m in the process of getting an Art Credential so if I don’t pass the test in March, I might have to take it this day!!!!

June 2012- Seattle Marathon (confirmed)

July 2012-San Francisco Marathon

October 2012- Chicago Marathon (?????) I’m going to really try to make this happen!!!

Surf City Marathon Course Map

The Surf City Marathon course map is finally up! Most likely going to run this race at a chill pace.  I’m running New Orleans Rock & Roll the month after and I want to save my energy to put more effort into that race : P

Seattle Rock & Roll Marathon (06.23.12)

Hello Seattle! It’s been a minute!  I’ll see you in June next year and I’m looking forward to the 26.2 miles you have in store me!

Nike Women’s Marathon San Francisco (Training Run) YAY!

What an AMAZING experience yesterday running the Nike Women’s Marathon!  Considering the fact that I ran the Long Beach Full last weekend, which I purposely ran at an extremely slow pace so that I wouldn’t injure myself and miss out on the NWM this year, I finished this race strong and injury-free!  The course was beautiful and not mention, extremely hilly!  I got through it and finished my first FULL marathon in San Francisco! YAY!

This particular race in general meant a lot to me. I was lost in my thoughts for 26.2 miles in the city where I truly found myself.  A city I call my own.  I couldn’t help but reflect on how much I’ve grown as a person and what I’ve accomplished (and still accomplishing) in my life since I’ve moved up here when I was 20 years old. I got to run through my old neighborhoods, which brought up nostalgic memories of the carefree life I lived in my early 20′s.  When I got up to 20 miles, we ran around Lake Merced.  I used to run this lake like 5 times a week during my college days.  It felt great to breath in the fresh air around me and reminisce on the distant past.

So far, I’ve only put in 11 weeks of training for the Las Vegas Marathon I’m running in December.  To put this into perspective, you typically need a minimum of 18 weeks to train for a marathon.  For my body to be able to run TWO FULL MARATHONS back-to-back with one week in between and only 11 weeks of training, I’d have to say, it’s quite a feat. I can’t believe I just completed my 4th full marathon for 2011.  hehe.  Nike Women’s Marathon “22 mile” training run- DONE!

My Unofficial Time: 4:34:45 (26.67 miles via Garmin)

Official Time:

Got SF Elevation?!?!?!  Just a glimpse of the HILLS and INCLINES I had to run through…

I Run To Be FLY…

One more day until the Nike Women’s Marathon!!!! I’m so JUICED!

 

Long Beach Marathon (Training Run) DONE!

Okay, so this past week, I’ve been contemplating if I should still run the full.  I missed my 19 mile long run last weekend and the most I trained so far has been 16 miles.  Also, when I found out that I got an entry into the NWM I was thinking about just running the LB half instead so that I don’t injure myself for the NWM the week after.

I did it.  I stuck to running the full marathon instead of switching my entry to the half marathon.  I decided this on Friday.  When I told my husband, all he kept saying to me was “to take it easy, run slow, and don’t injure yourself because the NWM is 10x better than this race and I know how important it is to you”.  My friends also said this to me.  They all knew how ecstatic I was about getting into NWM this year and if I injure myself at the Long Beach Marathon, I wouldn’t be able to run NWM next weekend!

The outcome… I took my time and ran at an EXTREMELY SLOW pace.  Even slower than my usual training pace!  I paced with my friends for the first half so that helped.  One of my friends was getting over the flu and the other was using the half as a training run.  We ran an average of 12-13 min miles.  When I split from my friends at the 10th mile, I caught myself picking up the pace for the next 3 miles.  I slowed down because all I heard in the back of my mind was my husband and friends telling me to take it easy, not injure myself, and not to ruin running NWM next weekend.   There was a good and bad to keeping my pace slower than my normal training pace.  The good is I ran slow enough not to injure myself.  The bad is I felt even more tired from holding back from my regular training pace.  It felt really heavy running at this pace and my feet were exhausted during the race!  Far different from my experience running SD Rock and Roll in June.

The race itself was nice- beautiful scenery all around me.  Well, I came out of the race injury-free, I put in my “20-miler” long run this weekend,  finished at 5:22:23 with an average pace of 12:18 per mile, and COMPLETED MY 3RD MARATHON THIS YEAR!!!! I’m not trippin’ about my time at all.  This was a training run and what’s more important to me was that I didn’t injure myself and I’ll be able to put in more effort into running the NWM next weekend (not to mention the 12+ hills)!!!

Two Full Marathons back to back!!!! Now will be a feat!