101

5/6-5/12

This was our last week of run club at the kids’ school, and we were happy that the weather cooperated enough for us to be able to enjoy our last two runs outside.

I didn’t have time to get out for a longer run than a mile on Thursday, so that’s what I did. I took the dog with me, which I usually don’t do. I usually have Jerry run with her because she always seems to get under my feet. I think I need to run with her more often though. She stayed ahead of me (probably because I run slower than Jerry) and she wanted to run fast; Faster than I usually go. I decided to go with it as long as I could, and check my time/speed when we finished. I knew if I looked before that, I’d slow down. I made it through the whole mile at “Holly Speed” and was really surprised to see how fast I finished. I was guessing 12 minutes based on how fast if felt when I started running 12:21-12:28 minute miles. I was wrong though. I finished in 11:20 which is a whole minute faster than my 1 mile PR.

Saturday morning I ran the Bolder Prix 5k in my mom’s place since she was doing the Barking Dog Duathlon with Kelsey. I wasn’t really sure how to fit that in with my long run training, but decided to split it up like my mom does when she has races and long runs scheduled on the same day. So I went to the 5k, then went home grabbed my run fuel and water and went back out for another 8 miles. I was feeling tired from lack of sleep, but figured that I was able to get through my 10 miler when I was tired, and this was only 8. I wasn’t feeling worn out from the 5k so I figured 8 would be no problem. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I don’t know if it was because I was tired, or because it was such a nice day, or what, but I swear I have never felt so A.D.D. in my life. Seriously; I was jogging along and I’m all “oh, look – there’s a turtle in the pond” and the next thing I know, I’m walking. Then the baby geese I saw last week are waddling across the path and I’m thinking about how cute they are until the mama starts hissing at me and then I’m distracted and laughing at her because I’m not even close to her babies. And the cows at the farm across the pond are mooing and carrying on and I’m amused that it sounds like they are growing at each other so I’m walking and looking to see if I can see them. I finally looped all the way around (at my distracted snail’s pace) and I’m running down my street to the house, so happy to be done when I look at my GPS and see that I’m only at 6.5 miles?!?! Oh I was so mad! So I went in had some water and grumbled to my husband that I was going to be driving separately to soccer because he had to leave in less than 5 minutes and I had to go out for another mile and a half. I thought about taking the dog so she could make me go fast like I did with her on Thursday, but after 9.5 miles, I wasn’t sure I could handle that even though I’d gone so slow. I went through my neighborhood and was just about done with mile 1 when I decided I was just going home. I was done, and justifying that my 5k was 3.2 so 7.5 put me at 10.7 and that was close enough to 11 that I could just call it good. I was passing a couple out in front of their house doing yard work and the man looked up at me and said “Hey, were you just running out on Drake a little while ago?” I told him yes and he said “Wow. That’s great. Keep up the hard work!”  That random stranger neighbor has no idea, but I had already quit for the day until he said that. His comment was just the perfectly timed motivation I needed to finish out that last half mile for my full 11, so I did it and was grateful to the man for making me finish.

There was no “Easy Run” schedule for today, and I’m glad because I don’t feel like I need a recovery run and I was too busy. I spent the day in Ian’s bedroom going up and down the ladder to get it primed for painting, and then I went out to dinner with Jerry before my mom brought our kids home. So I could have done it, but definitely didn’t want to.

3 weeks from today I’ll be finishing my first Half Marathon!

Weekly totals:

14 Miles ran, 3 lbs lost