I finally got in some decent mileage again this weekend. Hopefully I can carry that momentum all the way through this week since it’s the last one before I start tapering ha. This marathon really came up quick!
Saturday morning, I did the long run, a 12-miler. It was a very pretty day for a run here (shocking, I know.)
But it wasn’t a particularly fast day for a run, not for me anyway, and I walked whenever I felt like it, which was frequently on the way back. I also took a different route home that tacked on some extra mileage. I did 12.6 miles at an 11:03/mile average.
When I got back, Clark and I loaded up the cooler and walked back down to the beach.
We stayed until the sun had almost gone down, got dinner there in the village and walked home.
Sunday, I was supposed to do the shorter run on the schedule, a 6-miler, but man, I just didn’t feel like running that far. I only did 3.1 at a 9:25/mile average.
We spent the rest of the day in the village and then came home to watch the NASCAR race in Darlington.
Monday morning, I almost skipped our running club’s 5-mile trail run at Lake Calavera, when I woke up with a stomach that felt like I was going to have some of my digestive issues. But I started to feel better so I went.
Here’s the group before we started:
Most people hiked the loop, but a few of us ran it. Or ran what we could.
I’ve run parts of the trails here before, but I’d never been on some of the ones that made up most of the first couple of miles. There were some pretty hairy hills! Especially the downhills. I wore my trail runners but they had no traction on some of the descents, as it was just a thin layer of sandy dirt on rock. I really thought I was going to eat it once but I managed to hold on until it bottomed out.
I’d been dropped by this one guy, Shawn, pretty much at the start. Then, with only about a mile left, I heard footsteps coming up from behind me — and was surprised to see Shawn run past. He’d missed a turn and tacked on about a half-mile to his loop.
Not long after that, I made a slight off-course detour of my own, but I realized my mistake a lot sooner and only added a little extra distance.
Jim, the runner who’d marked the course, had told us the loop was really only 4.75 miles and we’d have to run a little more after the finish if we’d wanted to get in a true 5-miler. But thanks to my detour, I was already at 5.05 when I made it back to the starting area, in 53:34, a 10:37/mile average. I also had 557 feet of climbing according to my Garmin.
I was the second runner overall and first woman to finish, so I got a little gift bag of gear from the gym, a tank top, hat, some stickers and a gift card to the pizza place next door that sponsors the gym.
Oh, and I didn’t need a bathroom!
So after all that, I was really glad I’d went. It turned out to be a great run.
Not long after I got back home, it clouded up and stayed like that most of the rest of the day. We went out for a late brunch but then came back home, where we spent the rest of the day.
Today, I just did a strength training class after work.
Finally, here are some more pictures of Pepper. These are from 2017 and 2018, when he got sick with whatever never-specifically-diagnosed disease made him drop all that weight for a while.
These are two of my all-time favorite pictures of Pep. I was lying in the floor in front of the TV when I heard him licking the pillow on the couch. I always HATED the sound of him licking so I sat up and yelled at him to stop it. Which is when I got these two photos:
What a jerk haha!
A Simple Running Log 
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Comment by Chris Weber — September 8, 2021 @ 9:43 am |