FRIDAY!

Why I am so excited for the weekend:
1)  Dinner out with my boo tonight.
2) Jersey shore DVR tonight.
3) Running a long run with Kate tomorrow.
4) Baby brother coming home from college for break.
5) Going to to the waterfront with husband and brothers.
6) Running with Dad Sunday.
7) Making chicken parm Sunday for my family.

8) More time to cuddle with Penny!!!!

Corg in a Blanket

The past couple days, I have struggled with getting motivated to go do my workouts.  I feel like I am on the edge of getting sick, but since it's Friday and I will have the weekend to recover, I'm hoping I was just tired.  I thought of you all on here reading my blog and mocking me for skipping my run (thinking of Charlie Ban in particular) and decided to get on with my run.  Once I started, I felt fine.  That is how it usually is.

Tuesday: Really, really sore from the race!  Usually I like to run with the Hounds down at CMU, but I knew I would struggle to run a track workout.  I thought I would be recovered from the race but apparently I was not.  I came home from school very sleepy and finally motivated myself to do some sort of easier workout.  I needed to get in about 9 miles, so I decided to do a longer hill that reminded me of one of the hills in the Pittsburgh Marathon.  I warmed up for two miles in a nearby neighborhood and felt really good.  Why is it when I am not running I feel awful and have to wrap myself up in a blanket and when I run in the cold I feel great?? The hill was about .31/mile according to my Garmin and doing these intervals really made 9 miles go by MUCH faster.  I am not a fan of doing straight  mileage many days in a row, I get very bored.  The results:
2:08, 2:10, 2:09, 2:10, 2:10, 2:07, 2:10, 2:05.  The paces averaged from 6:55 - 7:10.  I have never looked at my pace on specific hill repeats before so I am not sure how to compare them, but I was happy enough to get out of the house and run.  I came back and I did my lifting in the basement.

Wednesday: VERY SLOW MORNING RUN.  Slow as in 9:21 pace.  I really couldn't believe my Garmin when it told me that, I was so slow that I had to cut off the last half mile so I could make it to work in time.  Hmmmm.  I guess these are what recovery runs are for?  Anyways, I was glad when Wednesday was done because I finished all of my parent conferences!  Yes!

Thursday: Another day where I really did not want to do my workouts!  Still pretty tired in general, but made myself go to the gym in the AM.  I felt really proud of myself after working out and was pumped to get my Panera breakfast.  After school, I had a pretty intimidating workout scheduled.  12 miles with 7 one mile repeats at tempo with only 1 measly minute of rest.  Between repeats 4 and 5 Jack Daniels was nice enough to give me five minutes rest.  I decided to move up a Vdot to push myself further, so it meant the repeats had to be ran at 6:44 pace.  Running anywhere in the sixes kind of scares me so I wasn't sure how it was going to go.  Thankfully, it was another day where I felt better when I started running.  The sun was shining so that was definitely helpful and I am always happy Thursday evenings because the weekend is just around the corner.  I did these at North Park because I thought it would be helpful to run them somewhere there were hills and downhills since the Pittsburgh marathon is definitely not flat.  My splits: 6:41, 6:41, 6:42, 6:39, 6:38, 6:36, 6:32.
I tricked my brain by telling myself I was only running four one mile repeats.  After I did the first four, I tried my best during the longer five-minute rest to convince myself I had not ran any mile repeats yet and I only had three at an easy tempo pace to do.  It worked.
This workout gave me some more confidence that I might be able to get a PR this season.  I am even starting to hope I can approach the 1:30 mark in the half marathon, even though my best was only 1:33:27 at the IKEA half marathon.  We will see - probably April 2nd at the Clarion half marathon.

This morning, I did 5 miles on the treadmill at 8:24 pace and felt pretty good despite a sore throat I woke up to.  I got to share my running vest during Show and Tell at school.

I felt like a big nerd even among preschoolers

When I posed the question, "Why do you think Miss Caitlin wears this vest?  What might she be doing?"  My (male) student replied, "So you won't get hit my a car, ran over, and smushed everywhere."
Well, he was right.