The Long Run (finally)

Saturday Recap:
I’ve got 22.5 miles logged this week so far. I was shooting for 26 miles. Not necessarily 26.2; 26 miles will do fine. That means that I will run 3.5 miles today.

My 10 mile run yesterday was a struggle. I underestimated how tired I was from a full day to trying to deep clean the house. Perhaps I was too aggressive but the opportunity to clean with minimal distract presented and I took hold.

We dropped BoBo at the airport for a 2 week vacation with his friend in Hawaii. He’s been told all week by people hearing of the trip that he is a pretty lucky guy. Lucky – perhaps not. He hadn’t even landed yet, when the father called to let me know that there had been an accident with one of his family members. He was going to need to come back to the main land – he thought – he wasn’t sure yet. So since I needed to stay by the phone to see how things would pan out, I just cleaned. I did the usual, but then I started scrubbing the floors with a brush. Down on my hands and knees – ugh – it wasn’t fun. By the time my husband came through the door at 6 pm, I was in need of relief. I filled him in the the BoBo story, and left him in charge of YaYa and the phone triage….and I went for a run.

Starting out felt more difficult than I anticipated. Water hadn’t sounded appealing to me, so I filled my water bottles with strawberry lemonade. It was hot; I drained the first bottle just after the 1 mile mark. Immediately, I was disgusted with the sweet taste and wished that I had brought water. Think positive; be strong; just run. I kept taunting my mind to continue running and not walk. I didn’t want this to drag on any longer than it had too.

By the time I was 3 miles out, I was fighting not turning back. Just one more mile and then it will be 8 miles. At mile 4, I urged myself to push for at least a half mile. But the GPS never picks up well at this park so since I had no idea where 0.5 miles would “exactly” be, I went to the 5 mile marker and stopped there to rest, stretch, and collect up enough energy to make it back.

The head games continued. In this direction, they were urging me not to walk, and not to slow down further. I offered encouraging thoughts such half way there, 3/5th’s done, and less than 2 miles to go. When it was done, I drank huge amounts from the drinking faucet and drug my sorry tush home.

Sunday Yasso Repeats:
With Saturday’s run being so late in the day, I just didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. I was exhausted! My husband had plans to meet up with his friend, Jeff, for cycling at 8:30 am. Due to our lingering single car issues, he was cycling about 12 miles to get to Jeff’s house. So YaYa and I decided the track would be our best bet for running. I set him up with a watch, showed him how to use the chrono, and we drove to his favorite track. There was a big event going on, so we headed to another track. At this track, there was Pop Warner Football uniform pick up going on. YaYa isn’t signed up and was feeling left out. He didn’t run. I found out some details about it, told him that we would check out the practices, and I committed to putting the registration on my to do list for June 2007. Then I did my Yasso’s which, by the way, is nothing to write home about since you will notice that there are only 3. It was all the time YaYa was willing to put up with – or at least that I could fight back the Mommy guilt for having him wait in the heat while I ran.

Yasso Repeats
Warm up – 1 mile: 8:47
800 Repeats with 3:50 rest periods
Repeat 1: 3:26 (6:52 min/mile)
Repeat 2: 3:32 (7:04 min/mile)
Repeat 3: 3:30 (7:00 min/mile)
Cool down – 1 lap with YaYa
Total mileage with slow jogging (rest periods): 3.50
Total time for workout: 31:37 (average 9:02 min/mile)

Now, we are off to the water slides.