Today started out like any other Saturday. We'd invited some friends the Seger's over for dinner. So most of the day was spent cooking and cleaning. Darvin bar-b-cued some spicy chicken basil & tomato dogs and chicken skewers, I'd made some marinated vegetables skewers that we bar-b-cued as well. We had homemade potato salad and Darvin cooked some biscuits in his grandpa's biscuit dutch oven. They were cooked to PERFECTION! We had corn on the cob and strawberries, watermelon and black cherry ice cream for dessert.
Unfortunately I've been one day behind schedule with my running training program all week since I was too tired on Monday. So that meant I HAD to get my run in today. It was the 1st workout of week 7 on the couch to 5k training program. This is a 5 minute warmup and then 25 minutes of continuous running. Well I didn't get the run in this morning, so I knew I had to get it done tonight. Seger's stayed pretty late and then after cleaning up and putting away I needed to add some music to my MP3 player to keep me going on these longer runs. Darvin got some of his CD's out and tried to download music to the computer and then my MP3 player for me. He was getting frustrated, so I finally tried my hand at it. After some trial and error I got it figured out and had downloaded quite a few songs. I was getting ready to remove the MP3 player from the computer and knocked it slightly with my hand and the MP3 player fell apart! After some finagling I was able to get it back together and as long as it's plugged into the battery section of the player it shouldn't fall apart. I'm strongly considering getting the super glue out to try for a permanent fix.
So...after all this we were working on getting out the door right around 10 p.m. Thankfully Darvin has a head lamp that I can borrow when I go out at night and Abby likes to run day or night. I was a little worried that she'd be too tired tonight since she'd played so hard while Seger's were here. But there was no need to fear, she's always up for a run! I was determined to get this done! And I was also determined to beat my previous best which was running continuously for 15 1/2 minutes.
I decided that I'd run at the high school track. At night I prefer to stay off the county roads, it just seems too dangerous to be on them as a pedestrian in the dark. We did our 5 minute warmup which usually takes us from our house to the street light on the corner of Zier and 96th Avenue. Then started the running. I decided that I'd run for 5 songs without looking at my watch to see how much time I had left. We got to the track and around and around we went...Part way into it I decided that it would be all right to look at my watch after 4 songs. Well when the 4th song was over I realized that we hadn't gone around the track enough times to be close to the 25 minutes so I decided to wait until we'd gone around the track at least 2 more times or when the 5th song was finished. My watch is a Garmin Forerunner 405 and it beeps at me when I finish an interval in the workout. Unfortunately when I have my headset on to listen to music I can't always hear the watch beeping at me. I don't like to look at it too often or I tend to get discouraged and think I can't complete the workout. So, pathetic! But it is my true story!!
Anyway, I held out and when I looked at the watch I had 2 minutes and 40 or 50 odd seconds left. When I saw that, I decided I COULD finish the workout without walking. I actually wasn't sure how long the run was because I didn't double check it ahead of time. That was probably a good thing because I probably would have been psyching myself out convincing myself that I couldn't run a continuous 25 minutes. Anyway, I am so happy that I went the whole 25 minutes without walking at all! I ran a full 2.01 miles and had an average pace of 12:26. I came home sweating like a pig-a first for me on my runs. I am tired, but not exhausted, I feel like I CAN be ready for a 5k race in a couple of weeks AND it IS possible for me to keep training and be able to run a 1/2 marathon in September.
Oh, HAPPY DAY!
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