Training for 11/11/13

I actually ran some miles over the last few days!

Saturday, I met Kara in Easton. We drove a little ways down the road toward Oxford and parked in a little pull-off area along the road. We ran a little farther down that road to a development, where we got on its “nature trail.”

Kara said the trails go much farther than we did; we had run about a mile when we found the trail, and ran another on the trail. When her Garmin beeped two miles, we turned around and headed back. 

We’d been keeping a fairly easy pace the first three miles, but once we were in that final mile and on our way back to her Jeep, the pace just kept picking up. I don’t know which one of us was doing it. Probably both! We ran exactly four miles at an 8:09/mile average. Our last mile was 7:31, but it was definitely much faster at the end than the beginning.

My foot felt OK after that run. I could feel it, but it wasn’t painful. What was painful was running that fast at the end haha. It sucks how quickly I lose speed, compared to how long it takes me to build it up. Oh well.

We got sushi for lunch, and then I went home, where I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with Pepper. Clark got to come home from Chicago earlier than anticipated. He was home late that night.

Sunday morning, I took my time lazing about. I finally put on some running clothes and took Pepper to the trail for a trip around the 3-mile loop. We got there around noon. We ran into several other people out there on the trail, most of whom had dogs with them. There was an older couple with three huge, gorgeous greyhounds. One was marked like a dalmatian, and another was black and brown with brindle markings. The dalmatian-looking one wanted me to pet him, but Pepper was, as usual, crapping his pants in terror, so we had to keep going.

In the afternoon, I went to a friend’s kid’s fifth birthday party, and then in the evening, Clark and I went out to dinner with his parents, brother and sister-in-law to celebrate his dad’s birthday.

Today was the first day of Shamrock Marathon training. I waited all day to finally do my workout. I took Pepper for an “easy” 3-miler on the road, but he wasn’t in the mood to run easy. It was quite a bit faster than I would have run on my own. When I got home, I went upstairs and did my strength training — ab exercises, push-ups, invisible chair-sitting and weights, finished up with plenty of stretching.