With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams...

I'm falling in love with sleep.  I find myself thinking about sleep through out the day.  When I'm with sleep, I'm so relaxed and happy.  And after spending plenty of time with sleep, I wake up with such a glow....  I hope my husband isn't jealous.  But I secretly think he's falling in love with sleep too. 

Woke up and went for a beautiful 2 mile walk around the neighborhood.  It was around 8 am, and it was still nice weather outside with a nice cool breeze.    Loving Sunday as a rest day!

I let myself sleep in a little today because I knew I had a short run. The training program said only 2 miles.   How am I going to improve if I only run 2 on Monday and 6 on Wednesday?  In my head it seems like that's not enough running to get me ready for my 16 on Saturday. 

Any opinions on the way the program does this?  I've been doing elliptical on T & Th for cross-training and some bleachers in the afternoons.  But I just don't see how 8 miles total during the week is getting me ready for 16 on Saturday.  I think my Saturday run has put a big dent in my faith in the program.

My run today was really great.  It was cool (under 60) outside and I had my great new headlamp to light the way.  I ran 4 miles and they all felt good.  I just ran at a pace that seemed do-able for 4 miles w/o over exerting myself, but keeping a good tempo. 

My times were somewhere around 9:10, 8:56, 8:55, 8:49.  No mp3 today.  It was nice to just run "natural."  I was glad I had my headlamp on.  There was a wild attack animal in the bushes waiting to prey on me, but when I turned my headlight on it, it changed into a cute little wild rabbit.  Magic headlamp :-)

I did 45 minutes hard workout on the elliptical machine in the morning.  Then my regular physical therapy routine.

After school, I ran 1/4 mile warm up, then I totaled 1.25 miles on the bleachers.  Walked a little for cool-down.  Got to the middle school track meet just in time to see my daughter run across the finish line in first place for her 800!  She ran a 3:06.  That was the best part of the day!  That and her telling me that she was glad I'd come to watch it.  :-)

Today was my Wednesday tempo run.  Last week's ended up being the charlie horse run, so I was a little nervous that speed would be a trigger for me.  But it wasn't, and things went great.

I did a slow warm up mile 10:15.  The slow warm up miles seem to really help me when I'm doing tempos first thing in the morning.

My four miles at tempo were supposed to be 8:51.  I was able to keep it between 8:15 and 8:40 all four miles.  No potty breaks today.  The last tempo mile felt like I was really working.  It felt good because I knew it was helping me in the long run.  I'm just glad it was the last mile.

Slow cool down mile was a 9:30 average.  Then I walked 1/4 of a mile home, stretched & did physical therapy.

Elliptical 30 minutes hard workout.  Some physical therapy after.

I was going to run, but last night as I was looking at my running plan(s), I realized that if I do my bleacher run tonight, I'll already have met my 15% increase in mileage for the week. (After I add in my 16 on Saturday).

15% for me right now is between 2 and 3 miles more a week.  I've felt so good running this week that I really want to keep running more, but I do not want to risk injury.  So I'm going to keep the 15% increase rule and find other cross training to do.

Afternoon work out was supposed to be bleachers, but because of the middle school using the football field for a game, we just ran around the local 'hood for 2 miles.  Easy run. I wore my garmin, but didn't even bother to see what my pace/time was.

30 minutes easy elliptical and physical therapy exercises

Convinced myself I was going to eat healthy today.  Oatmeal & yogurt for breakfast, and then...as soon as I got to work, there was a chocolate glazed donut on my desk from the Friday donut Fairy.  It's gone and it's only 8:30.  My will-power is gone today.

Getting excited about tomorrow's big 16. 

Had a blast getting to play with the "big kids" who were running the whole 24 hours.  What a new goal I have to work towards.

The run was great.  Perfect course with 1.5 mile loop.  It was so nice to have re-fueling so readliy available.

I ran with Mr. for the first 7 or so, then for the next 7 I ran with an awesome lady named Sarah.  The last few I did by myself, and they were great.  I felt so good that when I did finish my 16, I just kept on running.  After I finished that lap, I slowed down, but kept jogging till I met up with Mr.  We ran the rest of that loop together, and then we walked a loop.  My total run distance was 17.7.  I'm not sure what my total distance with the walk was.  I'll post the stats later.

I could have kept running. I wanted to.  But I didn't want to risk the injury of over doing it, so I stopped when I did. 

The course was rather flat compared to what I usually run on Saturdays.  I think that made it easier to run.

Next year, I'm going to work on running & walking and trying to master that 24 hour run.  It will be a long day, but it will be fun.  The energy at the race was awesome.

Each one of these laps is a full mile (pace listed) except for lap 18, which was my last .75 mile, and lap 20 which was only .42 of a mile.

Total pace for the 16 miles was 9:54.  After I slowed down, my pace for 17.75 miles was an average of 10:10. 

1   10:16 2  9:18   3  9:57  4  9:37  5  9:39  6  10:09  7  10:03  8  10:09  9  9:51  10  9:52  11  10:05  12  10:23  13  9:45  14  9:53  15  10:16  16  9:24  17  10:45  18  11:21   19  20:45  20  22:29