Back on the bandwagon

After nearly dying from heat stroke (yes, I’m exaggerating but I swear that’s how it felt at the time) during our run on Saturday, we took a few days off.  Last night, however, we jumped back on the bandwagon and did a 40 minute run.  Why is there no flat course in Harford County?  I’ve been trying to find a route that avoids hills to give my legs a break but no luck so far.  I think we’re gonna try the new extension of the Ma and Pa trail tonight.

In knitting news, I found a great way to keep my mind engaged while I play with this amoeba-scarf thingy: audiobooks! I picked up an audio book (The Saving Graces, by Patricia Gaffney) from the library yesterday, uploaded it to iTunes and then downloaded it to my iPod.  Sat on the deck as the sun went down and went to town on my knitting while listening to a great recording.  I might try this to keep myself occupied during the long runs as well.

 

 

Honey, is that car gonna hit me?

So, we had a forty minute run scheduled for this evening.  Don’t worry, we didn’t wimp out.  Anything but.  Allow me to explain:

I have really sensitive eyes.  The smallest irritant makes them red.   So allergy season is a nightmare.  Today, when I got home from work, I noticed that my left eye was super red - not itchy or gross but just bloodshot.  So I took my contacts out and disinfected them.  The problem is that it left me wearing my glasses for the rest of the evening.  Now, those of you who know me well know that without glasses or contacts I’m about as blind as I can get without being legally blind.  When it came time to jam a run in between the thunderstorms I had to make a choice between running in glasses (reeeeally annoying) or running while almost blind.  Guess which I chose.

My husband is incredibly understanding.  I couldn’t see anything and I had to keep asking which way to turn.  At one point I looked at him (well, sort of looked at him) and said, “Get used to this.  It’s what life will be like when we’re 80.”  Soooo pathetic.  But the point is that we were out there making the best of it.

In other news, we got our marathon training shirts in the mail today!  They’re gray Under Armour with the city skyline and “Baltimore or Bust” written on the back.  Very cool.  

Tomorrow’s a cross training day.  I’m thinking an hour of yoga sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

35 minute run

Did a 35 minute run tonight…no minimum pace or distance required.  Turns out that removing the competition with myself for running a certain distance in a certain time is really healthy for my body and state of mind.  I felt great!  Hmm…we’ll see how I feel when I get out of bed tomorrow though.  

Also of interest is how we’ll manage our training overseas.  We’ll be running in new cities, which seems to be both exciting and scary at the same time.  Are people (especially women) big runners in Paris?  I have no idea.  Might be worth researching a bit.  Is that too nerdy? :-) 

A bientot!

Bel Air Town Run

Ran the Bel Air Town Run this morning.  I think this is the 6th or 7th year in a row that we’ve run it.  The past two years the start’s been on Bond Street because of the bizarre (and way too time consuming) construction on Main Street.  You know it’s gonna be a tough run when it’s a billion degrees and sunny before the race even starts.  

Anyway, we ran at a pretty good pace for the first two miles.  In the third mile I started playing mind games with myself and needed to pause (briefly!) on two occasions.  Nonetheless, I was pretty happy with our 26:26 finish time (at least I think that’s what it was).

Saw lots of familiar faces - great friends from high school (Go Kerri!), people from work, and people we just recognize from past races and trail runs.  

Here are a few pics from before and after.  Enjoy!

If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane….

For years I’ve been toying with the idea of running a marathon.  (A marathon, for those of you who are sane enough to stay glued to your couch, is 26.2 miles.  Yup, 26.2.  Which is 13.1 more miles than I’ve ever run.  I know, 13.1 miles is nothing to sneeze at but doubling it requires true insanity.)  Anyway, today my running partner - and incredibly understanding/equally insane husband, Chris - and I decided to go for it and drop the $75 on the entry fee for October’s Baltimore Marathon.  Official training begins Monday.  But we have a 5K to run first tomorrow morning.  More on that later.