Progress Continues

Today’s Numbers: Nancy's Days Run: 74 Nancy's 2013 Mileage: 328.1 Elly's 2013 Mileage: 149.8 Money Found For Food Bank: $28.52

Let's start with HAPPY FRIDAY!!! YAHOOOOOO!! It's been a long calendar year week, so I'm pretty stoked it's Friday! Not to mention, the next two days are full of fun Mother's Day goodness, so I feel very blessed launching my way into the weekend!

I'm thankful the weather forecast that threatened thunderstorms this morning was a whiff for us so I could do my long run outside! You'd be proud of me for having Plan A (mapped outside) and Plan B (dreadmill complete with making sure we had/knew where the headphones for the tv were) completely in place as of yesterday afternoon. In other words, this girl chose not to whine about the potential of dreadin'! I understand if that surprises you.

My brain wasn't totally immune to the mentally heavy feeling a long run often evokes, though. Let's just say that at midnight, when I was stirring, there was nothing about running 11 miles that sounded good (or fun or useful in any way)! I suppose that's why we're not supposed to make such decisions at midnight while tossing around ...

Fortunately, I came to my everyday senses by the time morning broke. As I got ready, I thought about how my training for Go Girl runs has evolved over the past two years. The succession has gone down like this:
May 2012, The Disappointment: I totally want to upgrade to the Half Marathon, but I just cannot do it. I tried. I ran out of juice.
May 2013, The Perpetual Question: I totally think I can upgrade ... one more long run to seal the deal, but I really think I can do it!
May 2014, The Reality of the Ability: I already know I can do it, but, do I really want to ... (*)

Let's not be surprised when May 2015 brings forth: I know I can, I'm just not going to.

HA!

* The answer is, yes, I totally want to do it! But, at the time of this particular thought process, I hadn't even gotten dressed and was brushing my teeth. I'm a pretty positive person in general, but that's not evident the first hour after getting up in the morning. That's when I'm just terrible and everything pretty much sucks.

So, once again to Elly's dismay, I up-and-outted without her stepping into a 60-degree morning featuring a cool wind! Ahhhh ... I even made it a point to not complain to myself about the wind (which had its moments of requiring me to put my pedal to the metal if I wanted to make any forward progress) because the coolness of it felt so very good!

I recently read (somewhere ... in or on something ...) that 80% of your training runs should be a minute and a half to two minutes slower than your race time because it helps your body develop its efficiency in circulating oxygen, developing capillary beds, that kind of thing. To be truthful, the only real part of reading that that made it stick was because I tend to train slower than I, um, race, so I already believed it to work. It also stuck because it just threw down permission to chill on the training runs! Not like I don't tend to do that anyway, but how nice to have PERMISSION. In fact, it sounded like a DIRECTIVE to me (score!), and I kept it in mind this morning. And, you know what? It helped me stay in my let's-do-this-for-fun zone where I like to live in the running world.

Spoiler alert: My run ended up with the same time as I expected (which was good). The benefit of having read this is that I know I had a lot more fun while doing it!

Before getting to the end, you know there were fun things to see like this little guy who chirped big-time-at-me as I was passing him ...

I expected him to fly away when I stopped, but he didn't. He just kept staring at me. He hung out long enough for me to get my camera out of my pocket, readjust the setting on it and take three different pics! Clearly, he wanted some attention!

I went from bird to pig ...

Yeah, that's random ...

... and, then to these:

I do so love passing retaining walls where people have planted
stuff! I get to see it AND don't have to bend down at all! Let's
reserve the bending down for money-picking-upping, shall we?

My good move of the day was not only bringing my water bottle with me, but it was also planning on stopping to fill it. I knew I wouldn't need it for the first half of the run (so, why fill it just to carry it?), but I would on the second half. Planning that stop was the perfect mental break. In fact, it was so good that while filling up, I mentally ran through the rest of the run to figure out where the next planned water break would be! It was nice to break up the distance and to have plenty of water along the way (which I think was key to my finishing feeling so physically good).

Am I the only one who thinks drinking fountain water tastes
better than from the sink in a bathroom? Is that like the whole
'kitchen water tastes better than it does from the bathroom'
thing little kids proclaim? And, why is it that the bathroom
gets screwed on both of those counts ...

What also felt good along the way was when the route was dappled in shade ...

Even that little, bitty bit is a wonderful
break! There was more a'comin down
the stretch, and I enjoyed it all!

I finished the run stronger than I expected, happier than I expected (and not in the, "Holy crap, thank goodness that is finished" way!) and with 19 more cents in hand for the Food Bank! Oh, and I was also thankful that the pit bull that took off like a shot coming toward me stayed on his side of the road, not crossing to mine, as the couple who owned it argued about, "He's just fine!" "NO, someone's gonna make a call, and that dog's gonna be GONE!" You can guess that gave me great comfort ...

*sigh*

But, look! I finished completely in tact, mentally and physically:

Yay for being in tact!

And, then I came home to a happy puppy, and to this:

She was at it again ...

That was a great start to Friday; even better than I expected!! I hope you're happily heading into your weekend, and I'll check in on tomorrow's Rest Day!