Doing the Extraordinary

What! Two posts in 24 hours! This is crazy talk but I need to do it. I need to write about some thing something amazing. but first flash back time…
…May 5th, 2012, My two sisters and I run the Indianapolis Mini Marathon. For me, running was a relative term, I had gotten a stomach flu the day before and spent the all of the 4th puking. I was dehydrated and had no energy. I puked twice on the course and walked most of the time. Lets just say I was not very happy at my time, but this post isn’t about me but about my Big Sis Ash. She clocked in at 3:22:14. No judging…she has a very busy job at Purdue University and two awesome little kiddos. She has a great husband but as an Associate Head Coach of Golf at Purdue he is very busy also. She really had no time to train but she finished half dead and sore for a week.

Fast forward 3 months and a few weeks later…Ashlee calls to tell me that her department head/supervisor/head honcho supervisor guy somewhere in the Machine of Purdue University want his people to run in the Purdue Half Marathon.  She was also calling to see if I would run it with her. I couldn’t; we just couldn’t swing the finances to get me up there. I so wish I could have, though. Still as busy as before and she hadn’t run since the Mini she told me, “ I need to  do something.” Now, I am not a coach but this has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. So I know a little, maybe just enough to be dangerous, about training and endurance. I give her a plan based off of the Crossfit Endurance program. Something that could work with her schedule of basically no time. Here is what I gave her:

• Monday – AM: Sprints PM: Crossfit Type Workout
• Tuesday – Am: Leg work out PM: Tabata
• Wednesday - AM: Sprints PM: Crossfit Type Workout
• Thursday - Am: Leg work out PM: Tabata
• Friday – 5K time trial
• Saturday – Tabata

Leg workouts and Crossfit type workout no more than 10 min. She had seven weeks until race day. So she put her shoulder to the wheel and pushed. She would call me regularly to get clarification and support. I told everything I knew about what I knew. Which is not very much. With the shorter training time and its flexibility she was able to do it before and after work or sometimes she would do it on her lunch hour.


  Here is the course elevation chart for both Half marathons. A slight difference I would say. So let me highlight again. Her TOTAL workout time for the week was around 4 hours and she only run 5k time trial as her long run. She did do a 5.5 mile run just to see how she was doing but that was it. She stuck to the plan.

Today was the day.  At 0800 my sister started her Half. After 7 weeks of high interval training and no more than 28 hours of total training. She finished in 2 Hour 48 min…She is Awesome! So proud of her. She shaved off 34 min and added about 300+ more feet of elevation. Love ya, Sister. Purdue should be proud. You can really say that you… boilered up? boiled up? boiler up’ed? Whatever it is, you did it! We can all be inspired by this.