Here in the lovely state of Illinois we are "celebrating" Casimir Pulaski day. And to show off my amazing history skills I'm going to tell you that I have no idea who that is or why we celebrate it. I just know that it gives the kids a day off of school so in between being referee to my sons' "he's taking my stuff/touching me/looking at me/breathing in the same room as me" fighting I decided to sneak off and get a couple posts here since I'm so behind.
Last week was one of the roughest that I've had so far - other than the week I spent recovering from my chest cold. After 2 weeks of birthdays and then last week spent making a huge (think 100 people)cake for an event that my son was involved in,I am DONE with having cake around me. These past few weeks have also reminded me why I quit doing cakes for other people. It's so hard to be around the sweets without eating them and I gave in a LOT more than I should have. I also find that my overall healthful eating goes downhill when I'm making cakes. Not only that but my younger son tore into one of the cakes as it was cooling and I had to re-bake the next day. So yeah, after this week I KNOW I made the right decision in only making cakes for family or for extremely special occasion events that my family is directly involved in.
On Tuesday I decided to stick to the neighborhood. My calves were very tight so I thought the steep hills might be a problem. I ran 3.89 very tired miles in 1 hour for a pace of 15:24. Slower than my long, slow distance pace was the previous Saturday! I've not been sleeping like I should. I find myself staying awake too late watching TV and I think that had a lot to do with it. I need to force myself to go to sleep at a more reasonable hour because morning comes and the kids get up when they get up regardless of how much sleep I didn't get the night before.
Thursday I missed my run. :-( I decided to stay home and re-bake the cake that my son had torn up the afternoon before. Turns out missing my run is not a good thing emotion-wise. I was not fun to be around on Thursday.
Saturday morning - the cake was DONE and we went to deliver it early so that it would be out of the house and away from little fingers. I was much more relaxed once that was done but exhausted from being up so late finishing it the night before. My run wound up being around lunch time and I ran...
6 MILES!!!!! Hitting this distance is a really big deal for me because it means that I will be able to finish the 10K that I'm registered for in 3 weeks. I ran a total of 6.25 miles in 1 hour 36 minutes for a pace of 15:44.
I also have to admit that this picture was not taken as soon as I got home like the other ones were. When I got home I had lunch immediately and you would have thought that I had never seen food before! It's crazy how hungry these long runs make me. I need to figure out a way to get a handle on it though. Like they say, you can't outrun a bad diet!
I decided to stick to my neighborhood and the one attached to it because in order to go anywhere else I would have to cross the highway and I just wasn't in the mood that day. As you can imagine figuring out a 6 mile route while staying in the same neighborhood is not an easy task but the neighborhood attached to ours has cul de sacs. LOTS of cul de sacs. Some of those cul de sacs have their own offshoot cul de sacs attached to them. What I did was go down and around every single one of them and then, on the way back, repeated one of them. It's a slightly hilly route as well.
For this run I brought along Honey Stinger Organic Energy Chews in cherry blossom. I didn't think I would like these because the texture is really soft (think Gerber toddler fruit snacks) but it tuns out they are great for an easy snack that can be eaten quickly. The thing I like about these over GU Gel is that I can eat half of them and save the other half for later in the run. The gel, on the other hand, is an eat it all at once type thing. I also discovered that I probably need to bring more water with me. I had been filling my bottle up only half way to keep it light but I ran out around mile 5. From a physical standpoint it wasn't a big deal but from a psychological standpoint it made me very uncomfortable. I guess that water is my 'security blanket.'
Next week there will be no long run as I will be doing a 5K on Sunday. I'm really excited about it and look forward to sharing the experience with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment