Flip a Coin

I don't know whether to be disappointed or ecstatic!?! The plan today was to run 11 miles. We keep trying to up the distance so we can get to the 13.1 mark of a 1/2 marathon before we go to San Antonio and have some time to build a little speed...not simply say we can make it. It is simply for peace of mind. Unfortunately it wasn't in the cards for today...we only made the loop, 9.01 miles today. But you know - it was a GREAT run for us. I thought we were going to slow the pace a little, since we were adding the miles, but last night I mentioned to DH that if we were going to beat our best 9 mile time going RIGHT around the lake that we would have to run a 9:30 mile at mile 5.(Yes, Dear Readers, I am STILL directionally impared and don't know the cardinal direction - it is either right or left!) Well, I guess he misunderstood me and thought I wanted to do 9:30 miles for the first 5K! (I think I said that about running the Liberty 5K this Thursday maybe?) We didn't even quite do that - but here is what we DID do.

Mile 1 - 10:10
Mile 2 - 10:03
Mile 3 - 9:56 --------- 5K 31:05
Mile 4 - 9:55
Mile 5 - 9:46
Mile 6 - 9:52 ---------10K 1:01:37
Mile 7 - 10:03
Mile 8 - 10:08
Mile 9 - 9:58
Entire loop --------- 1:30:06

This beat our old best time for this direction by 2:31!

Evidently during the run DH's foot and leg started bothering him, so he waited for me by the starting point and told me he wasn't going to run the extra today...I was dying by then, my thighs were like jello, and said I'd join him at the car for a nice ice cold G2! We called it a successful day and headed for the hot tub. Both my black toenails have finally called it quits and fallen off and when I took my shoes off today there was blood on the toe-box of my new really thick thorlo socks! Can't even tell where it came from - I'm thinking the same toenail I've been having problems with - guess I'll have to wrap it next time! Here is hoping for the 11 miler NEXT Sunday...we'll slow it down a little I think :) ...

School bells are ringing!

I'm baaaaaack! It has been a while and several runs since I've documented anything here. As most of my loyal readers (both of them) know, school is back in session and my time is very limited. In fact it is pretty much limited to getting ready for school, being at school, planning for school, attending meetings at school, getting home from school, running, working out, or sleeping! Not much time in there for blogging.

DH and I did manage to get in our regularly scheduled Sunday morning run last week. We determined that it was time to up the mileage - even though our training schedule for the 1/2 marathon in November has us at much less than we are currently doing. We got up at 4:45 and headed for the lake. DH let me take the lead since we were going to try to do a full ten miles. The lake is a 9 mile loop, so we knew we would have to add a 1/2 mile at the end of the run and loop back to make the 10 miles we were planning for this week. Since I wear the Garmin and usually finish behind him he needed to know where to turn around. I was really planning to slow the pace a little knowing we were going to try for a record length...don't exactly know what happened there though....Here are the splits

Mile 1 - 10:28
Mile 2 - 10:11
Mile 3 - 10:16 Stopped here and discussed that we were going too fast :)
Mile 4 - 10:50
Mile 5 - 11:00
Mile 6 - 10:49
Mile 7 - 11:06
Mile 8 - 11:06
Mile 9 - 11:09
Mile 10 - 10:46
finish - 0:26

I was pretty proud of the consistency of the run - and of the fact that we actually completed the 10 miles the first time we tried! We ran a 31:59 5K, a 1:05:52 10K, and ran the entire 10:04 miles in 1:48:12. Just a little over what we ran the 9 miles in when we first started. The amazing thing is that the entire run felt pretty good, and this was going around the lake where for mile 5 your are pretty much running uphill the entire mile...I much prefer running around the other direction...which is our plan for tomorrow - we'll have to see if we can improve our time! :) Wish us luck! The nicest thing is that we really did run together the entire 10 miles. I helped him pick up his beginning pace, he helped me finish strong! Hmmmmmm sounds like we might be a team!!!!