Total Mileage Completed

Thursday Run: 5 miles
Saturday Run: 5 mile tempo
Sunday Run: 9 miles

Despite what I am about to tell you about how bad my 9 mile run was...I finished every single recommended run last week despite my extremely busy schedule. Now that I am very suprised by. Because last week was soooo stressful.

Anyway, the 5 mile run that I completed on Thursday was on a treadmill at the gym. It actually went alright. I finally got around to calibrating my I-Pod during this run...woohoo!

The Saturday run went alright. I remember thinking in my head that I should start rating my runs. Had I rated this run...it would have been "mediocre". I was actually running quite well but I had so much on my mind and so much to do that I kept thinking about getting done. Then I was frustrated because evidently my I-Pod was off by quite a bit because my regular pace for my tempo run was about 8:40 which is quite a bit of a difference from 8:15. So then without really thinking about what it was going to do to my run, I went into a deep state of thinking and started focusing on how my feet and I-Pod were correlating and how to make my pace faster by moving my feet quicker. I know...crazy...because I wasn't really thinking about the fact that--Duh--this is going to make my pace faster because obviously this is how you move faster. So then I ended up with a killer side stitch because I pushed my pace a little too hard. And therefore I ended up walking midway through my tempo run for a bit. But only for a minute and I was back to running and as good as new. I was very happy to find that this time the side stitch was manageable and didn't stick with me the whole run.

Sunday, I had what I would call a bad run. I was supposed to run 9 miles and in fact did go 9 miles...but not completely running. This was my very first run in probably a year that I had to walk a portion of it. Lesson learned: Do not under any circumstances eat a grilled cheese sandwhich and fries during the day that you have a 9 mile run. I don't eat this kind of stuff on a regular basis but Andy and I went out to eat for lunch and I made a bad choice. So anyways, I ended up with really bad heartburn. Another thing I haven't experienced all that often. It really only happened when I was running and it was quite painful. And then...another hinderance...Andy's neck of the woods is like hill city. I'm pretty sure that I ran more hills during that run than I have ever run in my lifetime. By the time I hit hill # 50 I'm pretty sure I was walking every hill. This is where my walking came into play. It's one thing to run 9 miles but to run it with hills is completely different. I know that I need hill training but honestly I haven't had a whole heck of a lot of it and I was on overdose yesterday. And then the last component of my bad run yesterday...I had to make a pitstop at a park port-o-pottie. Let's just say it didn't smell pleasant inside there. However, eventually I finished 9 miles...despite the fact that it took me a whole 1 Hr and 45 min to complete it. Yikes!

This week I don't have a long run (odd I know). So therefore I will be embracing my short runs with much love and preparing for the great big one in the following week.