I’m super happy with my training stats this week, particularly since it’s the first double-digit week (and first double-digit run!) since the beginning of June. In other words, this was the first week in two months where I actually completed all of the scheduled runs on my training plan.
This week was the first week after our big move–and so life has started to take on a more normal feeling once again. It’s also helped to have an easily-accessible running buddy, my sister-in-law, Lisa, who I spent my first two runs with this week. We scheduled our first run on Wednesday night–I ran to her house and then we ran back to my house together. I had intentions of running on Thursday, but by the time I got home, it was after 9 p.m. Moments after I moved “Run 2 Miles” to Friday on my Google Tasks list, Lisa called me to see if I wanted to head out. This time, she ran to my house first and we ran back to her place together.
That left me with a whole three-day weekend to get in my other miles. Friday morning, I decided to head out for my first longer run in the area, keeping mostly to the neighborhood streets since they have better tree cover than Woodward or any of the major mile roads. It’s always so strange to me to see how much distance I cover on foot on roads that I have driven around since childhood. It makes the world seem smaller. I was able to cruise through town and make a stop at the grocery store before heading home, which made my run all the more productive.
I had intentions of sleeping in today as a reward at the end of a long week–but couldn’t sleep past 7:30. I donned my running gear, snacked on half a PB sandwich and plum while I mapped out a running route that would break my run up into three chunks, and set out water and Gu for brief water stops after each chunk. The first loop around town went quickly, particularly since I knew I would be refueling after only 3 1/2 miles. By the time I got to my house, I realized that I still felt content from my light before-run breakfast, but decided to fuel up any way before heading back out, which was a good decision. Around mile 4, I decided to double the size of my running loop rather than heading back home for one more stop and tried to stick to my 6-mile route from Friday. I made one more stop at CVS around at 7.5 miles to grab a Gatorade and cruised the rest of the way home.
During my long runs in the past, I rarely fueled up along the way, counting only on the water fountain on the Paint Creek Trail around mile 4. My mindset was that I should just push myself to keep going. Knowing that today’s run was going to be my longest in 8 weeks, I made fuel more of a priority, which was a wise decision. It makes my hard ass objective to keep going in the past seem very foolish.
Bring on next week’s 22 miles–I’m ready!
