Week 3: September 14-September 19

Another week.  More fun than we can handle.

Monday
It was really...hot...muggy, oppressive, something...this morning.  We ran over to Lakepoint, but we had to keep stopping and jumping into the weeds when people would drive by.  And it was unusually busy this morning, so there was a lot of stopping and jumping into the weeds.  We ran 4 miles and averaged about 10:30, so about the same effort as Friday.  Not too shabby.

Tuesday
Christina and I decided to go out again on Tuesday and maybe do 3 miles.  But it was hard to get going running, so we ended up walking to Rose Springs Elementary (about 1/2 way) and then ran the last half.  Definitely not our best effort, but at least we were out.

We also met together for dinner and finalized our plans to do the St. George Marathon next year.  It's a go!  I'm excited, but I'm scared too.  We've set some lofty goals, but I feel like we can reach them if we don't let winter and the holidays derail us.  Also, I've run a marathon before and I know the amount of work it takes.  And it's hard to convey that the minute you cross that finish line, it's totally worth it and you forget, because when it's right at the crest of training time and you're running 20 milers, you can't possibly imagine anything being worth it.  But it is...even if it's just to cross it off your "life" list.  When nonrunners hear that you ran a marathon, they will think that you're the most amazing person in the world.  It's like constantly being buoyed up.  Even if it's a 5 hour effort.

Wednesday
Today was the run I was dreading all week: 4 miles at a 9:30 pace.  I was nervous because that's nearly a 30 second drop in what I had been running the tempo miles at this summer and I wasn't sure I was up for the task.  We mapped out a new route that didn't take us to Bates Canyon Rd, because it was so crowded with the high school crowd.  Instead we wound around all of SP; I was surprised that it was a nice neat number of 4 miles from Christina's all the way around to the clubhouse and back to her house.

I was even more impressed when we averaged 9:22/mile.  We even clocked a sub-9 minute mile the last mile. :)  That made me feel GREAT!  I can't believe how far I've come in the last four months.

Thursday
Our day off

Friday
Hillary joined us for our long run this week.  She picked me up and looked more than a little bleary-eyed.  I'm not sure how she keeps up.  She's amazing. :)




We cut our lofty 7 miles down to 5 miles since neither Hillary or I felt like we could manage the whole thing.  Hillary didn't get a lot of sleep and I had such an emotional draining day on Thursday (with the speech contest and then I didn't eat--a pbj sandwich--until nearly 10:30).  Christina was kind enough to indulge us our shortcomings.

We ran the same route as Wednesday and then tacked on an extra mile at the end.  I led the pack down the frontage road, and then it was Hillary the Rabbit and Christina the Machina leading me down Village Blvd.  I looked at my watch at some point and saw I was clocking a 9:15 pace, so Hillary and Christina were at about a 9 minute pace.  I figured we'd hit a 10:15 pace overall, about what I wanted to do for our "long" run.

When I checked my watch at the end of the run, I saw that we averaged 9:57/mile!  We did a "long" run, averaging sub-10 minute miles.  Man, that felt GREAT!

Saturday
Christina and I decided to bike up to Home Depot again this morning.  It's a tough(?) climb up to the light by Home Depot.  Unfortunately, I was such a slug that I wasn't ready to go on time and Christina had to be back by 7:30, so we didn't make it all the way there.  But we got almost there.  We turned back and rode really fast down to Christina's house.  I continued on home.  It was about 10 miles roundtrip, so not too bad. 

This next week, we're adding back in our track intervals on Monday.  I think they helped us best with speed, along with the tempo runs.