Elizabeth Clor's Blog, page 2

One City Marathon: The Planets Aligned!

"The stars need to align" is an often (and perhaps overused) phrase in running. It means that for a runner to maximize performance, everything needs to go well: weather, fueling, sleep, having a good day, and more. But the planets literally aligned on the Friday before my marathon in Newport News, VA. Along with it came ideal racing weather.

Race Week
Race week arrived and it was without a doubt the most eventful race week of my life. Our house would go on the market on Friday so that meant stagin...

Run Club, Rankings, and Marathon Goals

It's been a while since I've posted a general update on my running. 2025 has been off to a strong start and I'm in an excellent spot with my training.

Run Club
I joined a running club/team: Light Horse Track Club! They are based in Northern Virginia and have just over 100 runners. The club is growing rapidly and I love the vibe: serious but also fun and chill! I haven't been part of a club since 2014. I do love running in a team environment and I think this group is a great fit for me. I already k...

Feeling Fast For 5K

This morning I ran the "By George" 5K at Hains Point in Washington DC. I am running a marathon in two weeks and my main goal with this short cycle was to build on my endurance base from my last cycle with speed. I've been doing more workouts at 5K pace or faster, like 200m repeats, 1:00 hard/1:00 easy, and short treadmill intervals.

So instead of doing my typical long run with marathon pace miles, I opted for a 5K to see how my speed was progressing.

Nine days before my December marathon, I ran a ...

Frosty 5K Race Recap

I ran the Frosty 5K shortly before Christmas and the New Year's Day 10K on January 1. I am late in blogging about both of them. Neither of them were stellar performances, goal races, or particularly interesting, so the urge to blog wasn't as strong as it typically is. But there is always something to reflect on post-race, so I will start with Frosty. 

This race takes place on a course that our local running store, =PR=, uses multiple times throughout the year. I had run the course about five time...

Better Late Than Never: Tidewater Striders Marathon Report

Yesterday I ran my 35th marathon in Chesapeake, VA at the Tidewater Striders marathon. I'd love to say that I'm so experienced I would never make a rookie mistake. But alas- it seems like it's time for me to go back to basics.

We drove down to Chesapeake on Friday and it took us about 3.5 hours. When we got to the hotel I laid out all my race gear to ensure I wouldn't forget anything on race morning. Because this was a small race, there was no packet pickup the day before. Everyone would be getti...

That Turkey Trot Though!

I am running out of creative titles for Turkey Trot race recaps. (I am waiting for a warm year so I can use "Too Hot To Trot" - which would be a decent consolation prize for unfavorable weather.) Onto the race report.

This was my 15th Virginia Run Turkey Trot! I started running this course back in 2006, and have run it every year since except for 2019-2022 when they stopped holding the race due to lack of volunteers. My backup race, Ashburn Farm, is actually a faster course and holds my 5K PR of ...

I'm Running A Marathon Soon

On Saturday, December 7, I will run my 35th marathon: the Tidewater Striders Marathon in Chesapeake, VA.
Why I chose this race
I came down with Covid at the end of July and I took the entire month of August off, except for three very short/easy runs in which I thought I was recovered. Those three very short and easy runs likely caused me to sink further into post viral fatigue, so I wasn't able to resume running again until the middle of September. At that point, I came back with run-walks to be 1...

Ode To My Running Routes

We're moving. And perhaps the biggest change with moving won't be the house itself, the mortgage payment or the commute. But the running options.

When searching for our new home, we found plenty of houses that we loved but that were, as I called them, "land locked." My definition of "land locked" means the only way out of your neighborhood is a narrow two-lane road that is not safe to run on. These houses were automatic deal breakers. Our new home will be run-able, but as I stated above, the runn...

Back at it with a 10K

In my last post I talked about how I took 7 weeks off from running: 2 weeks with Covid, followed by 5 weeks of post-viral fatigue.

Getting Back Into Running
Once I was confident that I was out of the woods, I was able to ramp up my training fairly quickly. I spent the week of September 16 testing the waters with frequent walk breaks during my runs. By the end of the week I was up to 5 minutes running, 1 minute walking with no problems whatsoever. 

The following week (September 23) I removed my walk...

The Dreaded Time Off

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post, July 4th to be precise, and this may be my longest break from blogging since I started in 2006.

Budapest, HungaryGreg and I traveled to Europe during the last two weeks of July. We visited Prague for a few days, and then took a river cruise from Passau, Germany to Budapest, Hungary. We stopped in Vienna, Austria and Bratislava, Slovakia along the way. The trip was incredible, and we managed to run most days. I brought 7 pairs of shorts and 7 sp...