Sunday morning, my morning to catch up on some sleep, so 7:15am! I started my run about an hour later. My goal this morning was 8 miles or 1 hour, whichever happened first. Considering the entire week I haven't been able to really run faster than 8:15s, I figured 1 hour was more likely going to happen. But as I went out the door, I decided it would be 8 miles, no time constraint.
I was happy to see people again running, as the entire week consisted of 1-2 people total each morning. My first mile was pretty normal, about 8 minute mile, I decided to try to increase my cadence a bit, just to poke at my lungs to see if they were breathing a little bitter.. I know I know, you are saying:
I hit mile two, check my watch, 14:30. I felt comfortable, I pretended I was listening to a metronome in my head and hit my pace to that. The next 6 miles I looked like this:
And I felt like this after I realized I was doing 6:45s with relatively normal effort:
Averaging in my slower first two miles, it was 8 miles in about 55 minutes. I was happy with it, but I should have done jog for a mile afterwards to cool down, but I did stretch and use the tennis ball for awhile afterwards.
In the afternoon, I went to the Andersonville Dessert Crawl with my ladies and Jeannie at I Drink Soda While I Run and her hubster Jeff (Who I just realized I never had his blog on my feed, added now!).
The theme of the afternoon was:
My plan was to take a photo of each dessert.. yea didn't happen. There were two routes to choose from, my wife got one, I got the other so that we could try everything. We took the crawl a lot slower than previous years, and shared with our toddler, so for once, we were able to finish all 11 places! Score.
I very much enjoyed it!
I need to look back at the flyer that got lost somewhere at home to recap what I even ate (TWSS). And to my stomach..
Jeannie and I discussed getting into running and exercise while in line for one exercise, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on it as well. This focuses more on morning exercise. I would like to say, people ask me how do I do it.. but nobody does. You have to want to do it first to be interested right?
Anywho, this isn't a capture all statement, just one argument for just doing it..I began thinking about it after seeing this:
That is half the battle, but the first half is getting out of bed. I know people love their sleep, and that 60-90 minutes of less sleep just seems like the worst thing in the world.... But you know what is wurs(t)? Spending the next 15-16 hours of the day saying you'll exercise later, or tomorrow, and it doesn't happen. Then feeling bad about yourself and starting a sedentary pattern that is hard to break. To me, that one less hour of sleep to exercise and feeling good about yourself is worth way more than a little extra sleep... Unless you are Winnie the Pooh:
And this hit me pretty strong as well, feeling like you are just never on par with your friends or other accomplished runners (in this sports arena at least)
And it is almost time for the Bull's season opener!
Need another photo of Lil Smokie? Here she is at a friend's house!
